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I 



AMERICAN EDUCATION 



AMERICAN 
EDUCATION 

BY 

ANDREW S. DRAPER 

COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION OF THE STATE OF NEW TOKK 

WITH AN ESTTRODUCTION BY 
NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER 

PRESIDENT OF COLUMBIA. UNIVERSITY 




BOSTON, NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY ANDREW S. DRAPER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published December, iqoq 



(0;Ci.A252S82 



PREFACE 

From the papers wliicli have accumulated tkrougii trvent^-- 
three years of educational administration enough have been 
taken to make this book. For each paper taken thi'ee or 
four have been left. I stipulated, when the book was pro- 
posed, that the selections should be made by others, be- 
cause I doubted my fitness to determine which of my 
literary children most deserved an extension of life. Those 
selected have been freed from references to times, people, 
and places, fitted into a somewhat symmetrical whole, and 
revised sufficiently to bring them to date. The result pre- 
sents as compact and comprehensive an expression of my 
experience and thinking upon American educational ques- 
tions as I can hope to gather in a single book. For the 
assistance which has made this possible my acknowledg- 
ments are due to my secretaries of recent years, ]Mr. 
Harlan H. Horner and Mrs. Honore H. Greene. The 
introduction by President Butler enlarges my obligations 
to a member of the guild who never fails to appreciate and 
always inspires. 

A. S. D. 
Albany, X. Y., October, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

INTRODUCTION ix 

I 

ORGANIZATION AND ADMINISTRATION 

I. The Nation's Purpose 3 

II. Development of the School System 17 

III. The Functions of the State 39 

IV. The Legal Basis of the Schools 49 
V. Illiteracy and Compulsory Attendance 61 

VI. The Crucial Test of the Public Schools 74 

VII. Unsettled Questions 87 

VIII. The Need of a Federal Plan 107 

II 

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS 

I. Demands upon the Schools 119 

II. Science in the Elementary Grades 137 

in. The Rise of High Schools 147 

IV. Teaching in the High Schools 157 

V. Common Schools and Universities 165 



viii CONTENTS 

III 

THE COLLEGE AND THE UNIVERSITY 

I. The American University 187 

II. The Trend in American Education 200 

III. State Universities 216 

IV. The University Presidency 223 
V. Limits of Academic Freedom 236 

VI. Co-Education 256 

IV 

SPECIAL ASPECTS AND PROBLEMS 

I. Education for Efficiency 275 

II. The Farm and the School 291 

III. Physical Training and Athletics 307 

IV. Public Morals and Public Schools 327 
V. The Spirit of the Teacher 343 

VI. The Teacher and the Position 355 

VII. The Schools and International Peace 367 

INDEX 377 



INTRODUCTION 

It is nearly a quarter of a century since Mr. Draper en- 
tered upon the work of educational administration to which 
his life has since been given. He brought to this high task 
an unusual natural endowment and a still more unusual 
experience with men and affairs. He did not come to the 
task of administration from the school-room or the labora- 
tory, but from most active participation in affairs and with 
the practical interests of men. Experience had given him a 
sense of proportion and perspective, as well as a knowledge 
of men, and nature had endowed him with a simple and 
sturdy directness of thought and speech which gave added 
weight both to his words and to his deeds. 

No other American, I think, has, like Mr. Draper, been 
successively charged with the administration of a state 
system of public instruction, with the oversight of the 
schools of a city of considerable size, with the direction of 
one of the tax-supported state universities of the country, 
and finally with the supervision and control of the educa- 
tional activities of an entire commonwealth. As a result, 
Mr. Draper has been forced, in the daily performance of 
the duties of his several offices, to approach the educational 
problem from many different points of view and to see it 
under almost all of its limitations and difficulties. He has 
been a frequent and persuasive speaker at educational 
gatherings and assemblies, and he has written much for 
publication, in addition to the preparation of luminous, 
as well as voluminous, official reports. 

The fruit of this unusual experience and activity is pre- 
sented in this volume in something like systematic form, 



X V INTRODUCTION 

and will be read with appreciation and benefit in all parts 
of the United States. 

Mr. Draper's educational philosophy is so simple that 
it is more than usually profound. His training in the law 
has made him appreciate the full significance of the Ameri- 
can doctrine that education is a function of the state, the 
commonwealth, and not that of the nation, or primarily 
that of a locality, whether urban or rural. The logical con- 
sequences of this fundamental principle carry the admin- 
istrator far out into doctrines of taxation, of educational 
supervision, and of educational control. Mr. Draper's 
creed is frankly and aggressively democratic. He makes 
no apologies for ignorance because it is well-to-do, or for 
knowledge and capacity because they are poor. He has 
thrown his personal and official influence in favor of the 
policy of offering to every American who will accept it an 
opportunity for study and training that will increase his 
individual usefulness and his equipment for public and 
social service as a citizen. 

Those who have been fortunately associated with Mr. 
Draper have long recognized that it is red blood that flows 
in his veins and an indomitable will that executes the 
policies concerning which his intelligence is convinced. 
He has a keen eye for educational subterfuge and sham, 
and small patience with the doctrinaire who has lost touch 
with the facts and with the impressions and desires of 
others than himself. 

In a time of general disintegration and reorganization, 
when strange and crude doctrines of educational theory 
and practice are urged on every hand, it is well to have 
the sane, well-balanced, and well-tested teaching of Mr. 
Draper to fall back upon for light and for help. 

Nicholas Murray Butler. 

Columbia University, 
November 1, 1909. 



ORGANIZATION AND 
ADMINISTRATION 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 

Ours is a purposeful nation. It has always faced the east. 
It has always planned for the future. With the growth in 
material and intellectual estate, with the reaching-out of 
the common sentiment for the best opportunities for every 
one, with the new significance of our political theories in 
the affairs of all men, wherever they may be, there have 
come purposes and policies which are new to our own 
thinking and certainly new to the thinking of the other peo- 
ples of the world. The greatest, the very greatest, of these, 
for obvious reasons, are those which concern universal and 
liberal education. 

Schools are not of recent origin. Learning, speaking 
relatively, is as old as the race. But any definite national 
purpose to erect schools for distinct national ends is com- 
paratively new, and the self-conscious generation of a great 
national system of education by a people, for their own 
upbuilding and for the greatness of their nation, has come 
within the memory of living men and is essentially peculiar 
to this country. 

In spite of threadbare claims, the original settlers in 
America held no settled purposes concerning education 
which can be differentiated from those of their home lands. 
How meagre and undefined the educational purposes of the 
mother countries were, the student very well knows. 

Before independence, American schools were dissociated 
and fragmentary. There was no educational system. The 
schools, like those over the sea, distinguished between 



4 AlVIERICAN EDUCATION 

what were conceived to be the simpler needs of the peas- 
antry and the necessity of classical training of the higher 
classes for service in the church and state. 

Independence did not of itself fertilize, and did not reflect 
educational purpose. Neither the Declaration nor the 
Constitution a dozen years later carried any reference to it. 
This was not because the management of the schools had 
already come to be a function of the several states, nor be- 
cause they were unwilling to concede that it was a function 
of the nation. The matter attracted no attention. It was 
scarcely referred to in the congressional discussions. Nor 
was this, in turn, because the men of the Continental Con- 
gress and of the Constitutional Convention were illiterate 
or indifferent to learning. The average of scholarship 
among the members of the Constitutional Convention was 
high. Half of them were graduates of colleges. The 
dominant personalities were Alexander Hamilton, of Co- 
lumbia, and James Madison, of Princeton. Education 
had no part in the discussions and found no place in the 
Declaration or in the Constitution, because education was 
held to be a matter of only local and private concern, and 
not a function of organized government at all. 

Nor was the federal Constitution alone lacking in edu- 
cational initiative. The first constitutions of the original 
states contained only slight references to education. In 
Georgia and in Pennsylvania the legislature was enjoined 
to see that one or more schools were erected in each county. 
The Massachusetts and New Hampshire references were 
more comprehensive but less definite. Massachusetts made 
detailed provision for Harvard College. The North Caro- 
lina and the Pennsylvania articles enjoined that the legis- 
lature should so arrange that the public " might be enabled 
to instruct youth at low prices." This was in conformity 
with the common thought that it was not the function of 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 5 

the state to maintain schools, although the state might 
help the people to do it economically. The constitutions 
of the eight other original states made no reference what- 
ever to schools or to education. 

It would be interesting to follow the statutes as well as 
the constitutions of the original states for educational re- 
ferences. Certain it is that they were meagre. Old usage, 
the foreign influence, the fact that thought would run in 
established grooves, the distances and the difficulties of 
communication, made the evolution of educational purpose 
a slow and laborious one. The fathers did not bring it all 
with them when they came. England and America, in the 
first half of the last century, were educationally not so very 
far removed from the times of Elizabeth. Educational 
outlook and purpose grew out of our democratic life, and 
the stronger and freer that life became, the more rapid and 
the more virile it grew. 

As democracy really became free, and as the conven- 
tionalities of the mother political system came to be really 
obsolete, the educational purpose gained volume and force. 
It is the operation, not the mere declarations or enact- 
ments, of our governmental system that has developed 
popular purpose. As the people moved West, they man- 
aged their own affairs with added confidence and freedom, 
and as rapidly as they did, the educational purpose grew 
decisively. 

Although the first constitutions and laws of the original 
states made little or no reference to education, those of 
all the newer states were alive with it. They were not 
only alive with provisions for the elementary schools which 
should be common to all, but for higher schools, colleges, 
and universities, which should also be common to all. And 
while the eastern states do not know it, and until very 
recently have been stolidly determined that they will not 



6 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

learn it, there is no doubt whatever about the public edu- 
cational purpose having its most luxuriant development 
among the people who exercise their political power more 
freely and more uniformly in the newer states of the Union. 
Wherever caste has been most completely overthrown, 
wherever the aptitude for self-direction has had its freest 
growth, wherever the fundamental principle of the Decla- 
ration of Independence that all men are created with 
equivalent and inalienable rights has had its largest accept- 
ance, there the educational purpose of America has had 
its best exemplification, and there it has borne its most 
abundant fruit. 

It is hardly too much to say that the first educational 
declaration in American law, which was really more serious 
than ornamental, was that in the ordinance organizing the 
old Northwest Territory ; and that the initiatory step in the 
public policy of setting aside the common property for 
popular education, which was really potential and con- 
tinuing, appears in the uniform legislation of the newer 
states which set aside a section of land in every township 
for the aid of schools. 

As more recent immigration has given unexpected 
strength and completeness to the equipment of the nation, 
so it has given a new setting and a new meaning to the 
educational purpose which flickered feebly in the minds 
of our forefathers. Some new immigrants have appreciated 
our privileges better than some of the "older settlers." 
Ireland and Italy and France have enriched our scheme 
with wit and rhythm and color. Scotland has added moral 
strength and mental vigor. Norway and Sweden and Den- 
mark have sent agricultural insight and domestic thrift. 
The great German Empire has contributed scientific 
method, intensive mechanical skill, and splendid energy 
and stability to the conception which was begotten and 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 7 

then for a time held in check by English and Dutch 
pioneers. 

The educational purpose of our nation is a law unto 
itself. It is a force which all must regard. It acts upon 
government. It does not desist, it is not discouraged when 
government hesitates or statesmen cannot see. It is inde- 
pendent of dogmatism, of politics, of racial prejudice or 
religious bigotry, of language, of state or sectional lines, of 
partisanship or exclusiveness, of selfishness or sectionalism 
in any form. 

Old Andrew Melville, to the King's very face, told James 
the Sixth, — who hunted our Pilgrim Fathers out of 
England, — "There are two kings and two kingdoms in 
Scotland and in one of them James is not a king, nor a 
lord, nor a head, but only an ordinary member." That 
was the Kingdom of God and his Church. The other 
was the Kingdom of Men. One was enduring and the 
other changeable. So there are two governments in 
America. One is strictly technical, is exactly regulated by 
written laws, is definitely responsible to the political senti- 
ment of the country; while the other is a pervasive, uni- 
versal democracy of sense, of moral purpose, and of learn- 
ing, with an unwritten, free-flowing constitution, which 
shapes government to its purposes, and in which presi- 
dents and governors and senators are weighed by the same 
standards as all the rest. 

The educational thought of America has no inclination 
toward socialism if socialism means paternalism. It holds 
that the Declaration decrees equality of right under the 
law, and not equality of result in spite of moral and legal 
right. With legal right it makes personal accountability 
fundamental in our political system. It opens the door of 
opportunity to all ; but it takes from no man the fruit of his 
energy and endurance, of his knowledge and skill, of his 



8 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

patience and thrift, to repair the just consequences of 
another man's worthlessness. It not only accepts, it is the 
surest bulwark of, the fundamental principles of our demo- 
cratic institutions ; it approves the fabric of laws which the 
wisest men of the race have been a thousand years in 
weaving, and it is not disposed to avoid the operation of 
those higher laws which are from everlasting to everlasting. 

There is no smack of charity about the public educa- 
tional system of America. It is for all. It is the universal 
and inalienable right of every man and woman, every son 
and daughter of the realm. It is the corner-stone of our 
plan, the essential factor of our governmental purpose. 

If there are children in the schools who need help, if 
there are others who are not in the schools because they 
need help, they are to have the aid of private or public 
charity. That is not lacking. Men and women who ad- 
minister it are experienced in dealing with the needy. Aid 
so extended will not breed pauperism, and it will not put 
the school system in a false light. The public schools are to 
train boys and girls, — not to support the thriftless or the un- 
fortunate. People are to be encouraged to support them- 
selves. If they cannot do it, they are to be helped as a 
boon, not as a legal right. It is as fundamental that people 
shall suffer the inevitable consequences of their own mis- 
doing, even of their own misfortune — except where our 
moral sense relieves them — as that they shall have op- 
portunity, and have their reward for making the most of 
opportunity. One principle is the necessary complement 
of the other. Education is the essence of equality in oppor- 
tunity in America. Support is not a legal right. The two 
should not be confused in the common thinking. The 
schools have all that they can do. It would be most unwise 
to weight them with any unnecessary burdens, or involve 
them in popular misapprehension through confusion over 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 9 

fundamental principles. The schools are to train. Private 
philanthropy and organized charity may give such support 
to the needy as good sense and good fellowship will justify. 

The educational purpose of the nation reaches forward 
to the very mountain tops of human learning. It is time 
for all to realize that that purpose points not only to a free 
elementary school within reach of every home, but also to 
a free high school in every considerable town, and to a 
free university in every state. It of course accepts the 
endowed universities as component parts of the educa- 
tional system. They afford a fair realization of its ideal 
in some states; but it insists that they shall articulate 
with the public secondary schools, and, in one way or 
another, assure every boy and every girl the true chance 
which the plan and the progressive thought of the nation 
guarantee. If not, then it insists that the states shall do 
this through higher institutions of their own. 

It does not insist that every one must go to the higher 
institutions. It recognizes wide differences in the circum- 
stances, the work, and the outlook of men and women. It 
distinguishes between the kinds of learning which are best 
suited to differing and inevitable conditions of life. It does 
insist that the political security and the economic power of 
the nation shall rest upon the moral sense and the common 
disposition to produce ; and not exclusively, nor even very 
largely, upon philosophic theory, upon moneyed wealth, 
or upon a mere knowledge of literatures or of the fine arts. 
Seeking culture, it knows that the only true culture must 
result from doing, and that polish at second-hand, trans- 
mitted without labor, is neither deep nor true. 

It does not accept the rather general implication that 
honor and usefulness depend upon intellectual pursuits. 
It does not encourage all children to seek them. It would 
make the work of the schools aid the industries, and it 



10 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

would give quite as much prominence and quite as much 
honor to manual skill as to intellectual occupations. 

It stands for a balanced educational system, the best and 
broadest that can be made, and therefore good enough for 
all, in which every one may find what he will, may go as 
far and as high as he will; and not for a system which 
dignifies any interest or aids any class as against any other. 
In a word, it believes in schools of every grade and for 
every purpose, with equality of opportunity and absolute 
freedom of selection for all, and with special privileges for 
none. 

All endowed institutions of learning are held to be a part 
of the public educational system of the country, and 
private and proprietary institutions, if moved by correct 
influences and managed by proper methods, are considered 
deserving of aid and commendation. Public school officials 
usually give to sectarian and denominational schools their 
fraternal regard and professional cooperation, and ordi- 
narily regret that any may think it necessary on conscien- 
tious grounds to decline the privileges of the public school 
system and maintain schools at their own expense. Sin- 
cerity is recognized wherever it is convincing, and there 
is constant effort to articulate the public school system 
with every educational activity calculated to quicken the 
nation's moral sense or uplift the nation's intellectual life. 

It is the overwhelming, and, it is to be hoped, the settled 
American opinion that neither the federal power nor that 
of any state can sustain a business relation with, or give 
financial aid to, or divide its responsibility with, any class 
or interest not common to every citizen and every section ; 
but that affords no ground for irritation between any class 
or sectional interest on the one side and any phase of the 
state or federal power on the other. Indeed, if the state 
cannot give its money to expensive work which enters into 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 11 

the building of the nation, it may well give to that work 
the fullest measure of moral encouragement that will be 
welcome. In a word, special aid can be giyen to none as 
against another, but we can go to the verge of fundamental 
and constitutional principles, with all toleration of opin- 
ions and all true-heartedness, to bind together the moral 
forces and the intellectual activities of all sects and parties 
for the further upbuilding of thei nation. 

Public obligations to afford information, to extend cul- 
ture, and to aid self-improvement outside of the schools 
are recognized. There has been no more radiant sign of 
encouragement in our history, hone, indeed, in any history, 
than the manifest eagerness of our adult masses for know- 
ledge. Sound policy will give to libraries, and study-clubs, 
and all the means for study at home, an unstinted measure 
of generous public aid and encouragement. Whatever 
adds to the real enlightenment of the multitude, adds to the 
happiness, the strength, and the security of a republic which 
rests upon the common intelligence and equality of rights 
for all. 

No other country and no other age ever had visions 
of our great private benefactions to learning. The com- 
mon impulse honors the benefactors and holds the gifts to 
be sacred and inviolable public trusts. They must be 
neither impaired nor misdirected. The laws must assure 
the ends for which they are created ; public sentiment 
must see that trustees execute the purpose of the givers 
with exactness. No one can foresee the influence of these 
benefactions. They will gain great ends which are often 
outside the legal powers of organized government. They 
will round out and complete the undertakings of govern- 
ment. They will ornament and embellish the educational 
structure which government erects. They may experi- 
ment in fields where democracy must hesitate until the 



12 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ground is proved. The public educational system will aid 
them and be aided by them. Combining unprecedented 
public purpose and public powers with unparalleled 
private beneficence, the United States will develop the 
most universal, complete, and potential scheme of educa- 
tion that the wisdom and great-heartedness of man can 
devise. 

Of course, our democracy has its difficulties. Equality 
of opportunity, from the first school to the last one, with 
continuity of courses from the elementary work in the 
primary schools to the research work in the universities, 
presents difficulties which do not confront the educa- 
tional system of any other land. It is far easier for a min- 
ister of education, without interference, to arrange and 
administer all this than it is for a whole people to do it. 
But it is better for the people to do it. And the peo- 
ple tax themselves with doing more than ever confronted 
any minister of education. The zeal of the people, 
with fullness of opportunity, often puts more upon the 
teachers than they are able to do completely. There 
is seeming uncertainty and indefiniteness. But it is 
not to be forgotten that the people grow in strength 
and stature through doing things for themselves. It is 
the fullness of opportunity and the self-conscious power, 
and the knowledge that consequences may be corrected 
if need be, that is rounding out the educational system 
to its unprecedented proportions and its unparalleled 
effectiveness. The nation will go on doing things, meet- 
ing difficulties, correcting mistakes, bringing the perfect 
figure out of the barren rock, and gaining the splendid 
ends for which the people sustain the schools. 

It is at all times to be kept sharply in mind that the 
schools are not only to educate people in order that they 
may be educated, but also to educate them in order that 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 13 

they may do things. They are to be trained for labor 
and for effectiveness. Things must be done, and great 
men and women are to develop through doing them. 
Through the training they are not only to unlock the 
truths of science, but apply them to the agricultural and 
mining and animal and mechanical industries; they are 
to think out economic principles and understand the 
under-running currents of foreign commerce and world- 
relations; they are to learn the underlying principles of 
finance and apply them to personal and public credits; 
they are to abound in toleration and work with others in 
the institutions of society; they are to stand for knowledge; 
they are to respect labor; they are to exact the right and 
do it; they are to bring out the resources, help the thrift, 
stir the humor, enlarge the generosity, increase the self- 
respect, and quicken the sense of justice, of the nation. 
Moral power and earning power are to develop together. 
The schools must uplift the pupils, and the people must 
know that the attitude of the Republic in the world is 
nothing different from the attitude of the individual units 
which make the nation. No one-man power, no ministerial 
power, no money power, no specious but fallacious phi- 
losophy, is to rule this country. This is a democracy in 
which native energy and discussion will point the way.. 

The educational purpose of America is sharply distin- 
guished from that of other lands. The essential difference 
comes through our democracy. 

The English purpose would have every English child 
read and write and work. England has simple but effec- 
tive elementary schools for the peasant class. All peasant 
children go to them. Although they know nothing of 
American opportunity, the percentage of illiteracy is 
lower than in our American states. So it is in the leading 
countries of Europe. Of course, England has schools 



14 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

for the higher classes. But there is no educational mix- 
ing of classes, and no articulation or continuity of work. 
The controlling influence in English politics is distinctly 
opposed to universalizing education, through fear of 
unsettling the status and letting loose the ambitions of 
the serving classes. The placidity of the social organiza- 
tion seems of more moment than the strength of the em- 
pire. 

So it is also in France. Notwithstanding the republi- 
can form of government, the thinking of a thousand years 
is controlling. With less native sense and less respect for 
work, with more inherent buoyancy and more art-feeling 
than in Britain, the children of the masses are trained for 
service, — an humble service, though possibly somewhat 
higher than across the Channel. They are trained for ex- 
aminations and for routine rather than for power. With 
less fibre and substance in the character commonly trained, 
the result is not more reassuring. 

There is more to admire in the German purpose and 
plan, for ambition and determination are not lacking in 
the nation, and the Kaiser knows that the material strength 
and the military power of the German Empire rest upon the 
intelligence of the German masses, and the productivity 
of German labor. Splendid as that is, it is not enough in 
American eyes. 

Our educational purpose has a fast hold upon all that, 
and more. The nation wants more than industrial strength 
and military power. Americans do not know all that is to 
be known; they may learn something from every other 
system; but there is an essential and universal educa- 
tional purpose in America which distinguishes the system 
from all others. There are no "classes" in education. 
It is the national belief that the true greatness of the na- 
tion and the welfare of mankind depend not only upon 



THE NATION'S PURPOSE 15 

giving every one his chance, but also upon aiding and 
inspiring every one to seize his chance. 

The corner - stone principle of our political theory 
coincides absolutely with the fundamental doctrine of our 
moral law. All men and women are to be intellectually 
quickened and made industrially potential, to the very 
limits of sane and balanced character. The moral sense 
of the people is determined by it and the nation's great- 
ness^is measured by it. Before this fact the prerogative of 
a monarch or the comfort of a class is of no account. Be- 
fore it every other consideration must give way. It is right 
here that democracies which can hold together surpass 
monarchies. It is for this reason that the progressive will 
of an intelligent people is better than the hereditary and 
arbitrary power of kings. And a sane and balanced and 
boundless educational system, with a base which is broad 
enough and a peak which is high enough, will fuse the 
elements of population and enable a democracy of English 
speech and sufficient Saxon blood to hold together. 

All Americans are optimists. The expectations of the 
nation are boundless. There are no upper limits. Those 
expectations are not gross: they are genuine and sincere, 
moral and high-minded. They are the issue of a mighty 
world-movement; the splendid product of the best think- 
ing and the hardest struggling of a thousand years. 

Critics say that Americans are boastful. It is not neces- 
sary to put them to the trouble of proving it : it is admitted. 
It is a matter of definition or of terminology. Our self- 
confidence is bom of knowledge and of accomplishment. 
The nation believes in the stars which are in the heavens, 
and it also believes in the stars which are upon the flag. 
It knows its history; it understands its constituent ele- 
ments ; it has definite purposes ; it expects to go forward ; 
it believes in itself. 



16 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Our nation holds the essential principles established in 
the great charters of English and American liberty to be 
its particular heritage. It is enlarging, extending, clarify- 
ing, reaffirming, and transmitting them. It is putting its 
whole self, its political power, its sagacity, and its money, 
into the work which it has set itself to do. Of course it 
has its perplexities; but it is without apprehension. The 
great heart of the nation is conscious of its own rectitude. 
It will not fear and it will not hesitate. It will act upon 
its own thinking. It will mend its mistakes. It does not 
merely stand for security : it stands for liberty and fordoing. 
It is not' for the present alone: it is for the future. It will 
take care of its own. It will not hide its light. It will not 
meddle with other people ; but it will deny to no men and 
women who would uplift themselves such measure of 
sympathy and assistance as it may give. 



II 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE SCHOOL SYSTEM 

The educational purpose of our nation unfolded slowly. 
Although it was early conceived to be a function of govern- 
ment to encourage schools, the establishment of a definite 
system of instruction based upon that idea proceeded 
very gradually. 

There was nothing like an educational system in the 
United States at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 
At that time there were four or five colleges, here and 
there a private academy or fitting school, and elementary 
schools of indifferent character in the cities and the thinly 
settled towns. In the course of the century a great system 
of schools came to cover the land. It is free and flexible, 
adaptable to local conditions, and yet it possesses most of 
the elements of a complete and symmetrical system. The 
parts or grades of this system may perhaps be designated 
as follows : — 

(a) Free public elementary schools in reach of every home in 
the land. 

(b) Free public high schools, or secondary schools, in every 
considerable town. 

(c) Provision for free land-grant colleges, with special reference 
to the agricultural and mechanical arts, in all the states. 

(d) Free state universities in practically all of the southern 
states and in all the states west of Pennsylvania. 

(e) Free normal schools, or training schools for teachers, in 
practically every state. 

(/) Free schools for defectives, in substantially all the states, 
(gr) National academies for training officers for the army and 
navy. 



18 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

(h) A vast number of private kindergartens, music and art 
schools, commercial schools, industrial schools, professional 
schools, denominational colleges, with a half dozen leading and 
privately endowed universities. 

This miglity educational system has developed with the 
growth of towns and cities and states. It has been shaped 
by the advancing sagacity of the people. Above all other 
American civic institutions, it has been the one most 
expressive of the popular will and the common purposes. 
Everywhere it is held in the control of the people, and so 
far as practicable in the control of local assemblages. 
While the tendency of later years has, from necessity, been 
towards centralization of management, the conspicuous 
characteristic has always been the extent to which the 
elementary and secondary schools are controlled and 
directed by each community. The inherent and universal 
disposition in this direction has favored general school laws 
and yielded to centralized administration only so far as has 
come to be necessary to life, efficiency, and growth. But 
circumstances have made this necessary to a very con- 
siderable extent. 

The " school district" is the oldest and the most primary 
form of school organization. Indeed, it is the smallest civil 
division of our political system. It resulted from the natural 
disposition of neighboring families to associate together for 
the maintenance of a school. Later it was recognized by 
law and given some legal functions and responsibilities. 
Its territorial extent is no larger than will permit of all the 
children attending a sii)gle school, although it sometimes 
happens that in sparsely settled country the children have 
to go several miles to school. It ordinarily accommodates 
but a few families. Districts have had legal existence with 
but one family in each, and many with not more than a 
half dozen families. The "district system" is in opera- 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 19 

tion in the rural communities in most of the states, and in 
such the number of districts extends into the thousands. 
For example, in New York, there are over eleven thou- 
sand and in Illinois over twelve thousand school districts. 

The government of the school district is the most simple 
and democratic that can be imagined. It is controlled by- 
school meetings composed of the resident legal voters. In 
many of the states women have been constituted legal voters 
at school meetings. These meetings are held at least 
annually, and as much oftener as may be desired. They 
may vote needed repairs to the primitive schoolhouse and 
desirable appliances for the school. They may decide to 
erect a new schoolhouse. They may elect officers, one or 
more, commonly called trustees or directors, who must 
carry out their directions and who are required by law to 
employ the teacher and to have general oversight of the 
school. Although the law ordinarily gives the trustees free 
discretion in the appointment of teachers, provided only 
that a person duly certificated must be appointed, yet it 
not infrequently happens that the district controls the se- 
lection of the teacher through the election of trustees with 
known preferences. 

Much has been said against the district system, and 
doubtless much that has been said has been justified. At 
the same time it cannot be denied that the system has had 
much to commend it. It has suited the conditions of coun- 
try life; it has resulted in schools adapted to the thought 
and wants of farming people; it has done something to 
educate the people themselves, parents as well as children, 
in civic spirit and patriotism ; and it has afforded a meeting 
place for the people within comfortable reach of every 
home. The school has not always been the best, but ordi- 
narily it has been as good as a free and primitive people 
would sustain or could profit by. It is true that the teachers 



20 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

have generally been young and inexperienced, but they 
have not yet been led to put the means above the doing, 
and as a rule they have been among the most promising 
young people in the world, the ones who, a few years later, 
have been the makers of opinion and the leaders of action 
upon a considerable field. Certainly the work has lacked 
system, continuity, and progressiveness, but, on the other 
hand, the children in the country schools have had the 
home training and the free, natural life which has devel- 
loped strong qualities in character and individual initia- 
tive in large measure, and so they have not suffered seri- 
ously in comparison with the children living in the towns. 
The district system has sufficed well for them, and it has 
otherwise been of much advantage to the people; and its 
shortcomings or abuses are hardly worse than are found 
under more pretentious systems. Surely the American 
district school system is to be spoken of with respect, for 
it has exerted a marked influence upon our citizenship, 
and has given strong and wholesome impulses in all the 
affairs of the nation. 

While the earlier general educational purpose seems 
to have been to make the district system more perfect, 
the later tendency has unmistakably been to merge it into 
a more pretentious organization, covering a larger area, 
and capable of larger undertakings. The cause of this 
has been the desire for larger schools, taught by teachers 
better prepared, and capable of broader and better work, 
as well as the purpose to distribute educational advan- 
tages more evenly to all the people. Accordingly, in most 
of the states there has been a serious discussion of the rela- 
tive advantages of the township as against the district 
system, and in a number of the states the former has already 
supplanted the latter. 

The township system makes the township the unit of 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 21 

school government. It is administered by officers chosen at 
annual town meetings, or sometimes by central boards, the 
members of which are chosen by the electors of different 
sub-districts. In any event, the board has charge of all the 
elementary schools of the township, and, if there is one as 
is frequently the case, of the township high school. The 
board, following the different statutes and the authorized 
directions of the township school electors, provides the 
buildings and cares for them, supplies the needed fur- 
nishings and appliances, employs the teachers, and regu- 
lates the general operations of the school. 

It is at once seen that the township system is much less 
formally democratic and much more centralized than the 
district system. It has perhaps produced better schools and 
schools of more uniform excellence. One of its most benefi- 
cent influences has been the multiplication of township 
high schools, in which all the children of the township have 
had equality of rights. These high schools have given an 
uplifting stimulus to the elementary schools of the town- 
ship, have led the children to see that the work of the local 
school is not all there is of education, and have given many 
of them ambitions to master the course of the secondary 
school. 

The township system has many advantages over the 
district system for a people who are ready for it. It is 
adapted to the development and to the administration 
of a higher grade of schools and very likely to better 
schools of all grades. It is a step, and an important step, 
towards that general centralization in management and 
greater uniformity of improved methods of supervision 
and instruction now so manifest throughout the school 
system of the United States. 

The county system of school administration is found 
in nearly all the southern states. This has resulted from 



22 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the general system of county rather than township govern- 
ment prevalent in all the affairs of the southern states 
from the beginning, and easily traceable to historic 
causes. The county is the unit of school government in 
the southern statas, because it has been the unit of all 
government. 

The county system is not constituted identically in all 
of the southern states. In Georgia, for example, the grand 
jury of each county selects from the freeholders five per- 
sons to comprise the county board of education ; in North 
Carolina the General Assembly appoints such a county 
board of education, while in Florida the board is elected 
by the people biennially, and in some states a county com- 
missioner or superintendent of schools is the responsible 
authority for managing the schools of the county. In 
several of the states the county board or superintendent 
divides the territory into sub-districts and appoints trustees 
or directors in each. In the latter instance the local trustees 
seem to be ministerial officers carrying out the policy of 
the county board. In any case the unit of territory for the 
administration of the schools is the county, and county 
officials locate sites, provide buildings, select textbooks, 
prescribe the course of work, examine and appoint teachers, 
and do all the things which are within the functions of 
district or township trustees or city boards of education 
in the northern states. 

As communities have increased in population they have 
outgrown any primary or elementary system of organiza- 
tion for school purposes. Laws of general application or 
common usage in sparsely settled territory would not suffice 
for a city of many thousands of people. In such cities the 
people could not meet to fix the policies and manage the 
business of the schools : they could not meet even to choose 
officers to manage the schools. The state legislatures have 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 23 

made special laws to meet the circumstances of the larger 
places. In some states these laws are uniform for all cities 
of a certain class, that is, cities having populations of about 
the same number, but more often each city has gone to the 
legislature and procured the enactment of such statutes 
as seemed suited to the immediate circumstances. 

Because of this there is no uniform or general system of 
public school administration in the American cities. Of 
course there are some points of similarity. In nearly every 
case there is a board of education charged with the man- 
agement of the schools, but these boards are constituted 
in almost as many different ways as there are different 
cities, and their legal functions are widely diverse. In the 
greater number of cities the boards of education are 
elected by the people, in some cases on a general city ticket, 
and again by wards or sub-districts ; in some places at a 
general or municipal election, and in others at elections 
held for the particular purpose. But in many cities, and 
particularly the larger ones, the boards are appointed by 
the mayor alone, or by the mayor and city council acting 
jointly. In the city of Philadelphia the board is appointed 
by the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, in Pitts- 
burg by local directors. In a few instances the board is 
appointed by the city councils. 

In the city of Cleveland the board of education consists 
of two branches: a school director elected by the people 
for the term of two years, and a school council of seven 
members, likewise elected by the people in three groups 
with terms of three years each. This scheme was devised 
in 1892 by prominent business men of the city, and, having 
been enacted by the legislature, has, with some important 
changes, been in satisfactory operation since. 

It must be said that there has been much dissatisfaction 
with the way school affairs have been managed in the 



24 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

larger cities. In the smaller places, even in cities of a hun- 
dred thousand or more inhabitants, matters have gone 
well enough as a general rule, but in the greater cities there 
have been many and serious complaints of the misuse of 
funds, of neglect of property, of the appointment of unfit 
teachers, and of general incapacity, or worse, on the part 
of the boards. Of course it is notorious that the public 
business of American cities has very commonly been 
badly managed. It would not be true to say that the busi- 
ness of the schools has suffered as seriously as municipal 
business, but it certainly has been managed badly enough. 

All this has come from the amounts of money that are 
involved and the number of appointments that are con- 
stantly to be made. More than a hundred and fifty mil- 
lions of dollars are paid annually for teachers' wages in 
the United States. People who are needy have sought 
positions as teachers without much reference to prepara- 
tion, and the kindly disposed have aided them without 
any apparent appreciation of the injury they were doing 
to the highest interests of their neighbors. Men engaged 
in managing the organizations of the different political 
parties have undertaken to control appointments in the 
interests of their party machines. And the downright 
scoundrels have infested the school organization in some 
places for the sake of plunder. 

As cities have grown in size and multiplied in numbers, 
the more scandal there has been. But if the troubles have 
multiplied and intensified as the cities have grown, so has 
the determination of the people strengthened to remedy the 
difficulties. There has been no more decided and no more 
healthy educational movement in the United States in 
recent years, and none with greater or more strongly 
intrenched obstacles in its way, than that for better school 
organization and administration in the larger cities. Its 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 25 

particular features or objective points were early pointed 
out by the committee of fifteen of the National Educa- 
tional Association in the following declarations : — 

First. The affairs of the school should not be mixed up with 
partisan contests or municipal business. 

Second. There should be a sharp distinction between legis- 
lative functions and executive duties. 

Third. Legislative functions should be clearly fixed by stat- 
ute and be exercised by a comparatively small board, each mem- 
ber of which is representative of the whole city. This board, 
within statutory limitations, should determine the policy of the 
system, levy taxes, and control the expenditures. It should make 
no appointments. Every act should be by a recorded resolution. 
It seems preferable that this board be created by appointment 
rather than election, and that it be constituted of two branches 
acting against each other. 

Fourth. Administration should be separated into two great 
independent departments, one of which manages the business 
interests and the other of which supervises the instruction. Each 
of these should be wholly directed by a single official who is 
vested with ample authority and charged with full responsibil- 
ity for sound administration. 

Fifth. The chief executive officer on the business side should 
be charged with the care of all property and with the duty of 
keeping it in suitable condition : he should provide all necessary 
furnishings and appliances : he should make all agreements and 
see that they are properly performed: he should appoint all as- 
sistants, janitors, and workmen. In a word, he should do all that 
the law contemplates and all that the board authorizes, concern- 
ing the business affairs of the school system, and when anything 
goes wrong he should answer for it. He may be appointed by the 
board, but we think it preferable that he be chosen in the same 
way the members of the board are chosen, and be given a veto 
upon the acts of the board. 

Sixth. The chief executive officer of the department of in- 
struction should be given a long term, and may be appointed 
by the board. If the board is constituted of two branches, he 
should be nominated by the business executive and confirmed 



26 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

by the legislative branch. Once appointed he should be inde- 
pendent. He should appoint all authorized assistants and teach- 
ers from an eligible list to be constituted as provided by law. He 
should assign to duties and discontinue services for cause, at 
his discretion. He should determine all matters relating to instruc- 
tion. He should be charged with the responsibility of developing 
a professional and enthusiastic teaching force, and of making 
all the teaching scientific and forceful. He must perfect the or- 
ganization of his department and make and carry out plans to 
accomplish this. If he cannot do this in a reasonable time he 
should be superseded by one who can. 

It ought to be said before passing from this phase of the 
subject that these principles have made much headway, 
and that the promise is excellent. There is not a city of any 
importance in the country in which they have not been un- 
der discussion, and there are few in which some of them 
have not been adopted and put in operation. 

The powers of the city boards of education are very 
broad, almost without limits, as to the management of the 
schools. They commonly do everything but decide the 
amount of money which shall be raised for the schools, and 
in some cases even that high prerogative is left to them. 
They purchase new sites, determine the plans and erect new 
buildings, provide for maintenance, appoint officers and 
teachers, fix salaries, make promotions, and, acting within 
very few and slight constitutional or statutory limitations, 
enact all of the regulations for the control of the vast system. 

The high powers cheerfully given by the people to school 
boards have arisen from the earnest desire that the schools 
shall be independent and the teaching of the best. Of 
course these independent and large prerogatives are exceed- 
ingly advantageous to educational progress when exercised 
by good men. When they fall into the hands of weak or bad 
men they are equally capable of being put to the worst uses. 
And it is not to be disguised that in some of the foremost 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 27 

cities they have fallen into some hands which are corrupt, 
although more often into the hands of men of excellent per- 
sonal character, but who do not see the importance of ap- 
plying pedagogical principles to instruction, and who are, 
in one way or another, used by designing persons for parti- 
san, selfish, or corrupt purposes. Of course it is not to be 
implied that there are not to be found in every school board 
men or women with clear heads and stout hearts, who un- 
derstand the essential principles of sound school adminis- 
tration and are courageously contending for them. Nor 
must the serious difficulty of holding together pupils from 
such widely different homes in common schools be lost sight 
of. And again, the obstacles in the way of choosing and 
training a teaching force of thousands of persons, and of 
continually energizing the entire body with new pedagogi- 
cal life, must be remembered. And yet again, the dangers 
of corruption where millions of dollars are being annually 
disbursed by boards which are practically independent, are 
apparent. But, notwithstanding all of the hindrances, the 
issue has been joined and the battle will be fought out to 
a successful result. There can be but one outcome. The 
forces of decency and progress always prevail in the end. 

The demands of the intelligent and sincere friends of 
popular education in our great cities are for a more scien- 
tific plan of organization, which shall separate legislative 
and executive functions, which shall put the interests of 
teachers upon the merit basis and leave them free to apply 
pedagogical principles to the instruction, which shall give 
authority to do what is needed and protect officers and 
teachers in doing it, while it locates responsibility and pro- 
vides the way for ousting the incompetent or the corrupt. 
The trouble has been that the boards were independent and 
the machinery so ponderous and the prerogatives and re- 
sponsibilities of officials so confused that people who were 



28 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

aggrieved could not get a hearing or could not secure re- 
dress, and sometimes for the reason that no one oflBcial had 
the power to afiford redress. What is demanded and what is 
apparently coming is a more perfect system, which will give 
a teacher credit for good work in the schools and enable a 
parent to point his finger at, and procure the dismissal of, 
an oflGicial who inflicts upon his child a school-room which 
is not wholesome and healthful, or a teacher who is physi- 
cally, pedagogically, or morally unfit to train his child. 

Since the American school system has come to be sup- 
ported wholly by taxation, it has come to depend upon the 
exercise of a sovereign power. In the United States the 
sovereign powers are not all lodged in one place. Such as 
have not been ceded to the general government are retained 
by the states. The provision and supervision of schools are 
in the latter class. Hence, the school system, while marked 
by many characteristics which are common throughout the 
country, has a legal organization peculiar to each state. 

The dependence upon state authority which has thus 
arisen has gone further than anything else towards the de- 
velopment of a system and towards the equalization of 
school privileges to the people of the same state. Naturally 
indisposed to relinquish the management of their own 
school affairs in their own way, the people have had to 
bow to the authority of their states, in so far as the state saw 
fit to assert its authority, because they could not act without 
it, as counties, cities, townships and districts have no power 
whatever to levy taxes for school purposes except as author- 
ized by the state. They have become reconciled to the inter- 
vention of state authority, moreover, as they have seen that 
such authority improved the schools. 

And the application of state authority to all of the schools 
supported by public moneys of course makes them more 
ahke and better. The whims of local settlements disappear. 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 29 

The schoolhouses are better. More is done for the prepara- 
tion of teachers, and more uniform exactions are put upon 
candidates for the teaching service. The courses of study 
are more quickly and symmetrically improved. There is 
criticism and stimulus from a common centre for all of the 
educational work of the state. 

The different states have gone to very diflFerent lengths 
in exercising their authority. The length to which each has 
gone has depended upon the necessity of state intervention 
by the exercise of the taxing power, or of delegating that 
power to subdivisions of the territory, and upon the senti- 
ment of the people. In most cases it has been determined 
by the location of the point of equipoise between necessity 
and free consent. The state government has, of course, not 
been disposed to go further than the people were willing, 
for all government is by the people. The thought of the 
people in the different states has been somewhat influenced 
by considerations which arise out of their early history, but 
doubtless in most cases it is predicated upon their later 
experiences. 

Of course, all the states have legislated much in refer- 
ence to the schools, and there is scarcely a session of one of 
the state legislatures in which they do not receive consider- 
able attention. In all the states there is some sort of a 
state school organization established by law. In practically 
all there is an officer known as the state superintendent of 
public instruction, or the commissioner of education. In 
some there is a state board of education. In New York, for 
example, there is a state board of regents and a state com- 
missioner of education in general charge of all public 
schools and of every educational activity of the state. This 
oversight extends to libraries, admission to the professions, 
and everything that the state does to promote the intellec- 
tual uplift of the people. The board of regents exercises the 



30 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

powers of the state in legislating upon educational policies, 
and appoints the commissioner of education who is the ex- 
ecutive officer of the board. Aside from that, the commis- 
sioner of education apportions the state school funds; he 
determines the conditions of admission, the courses of work 
and the employment of teachers ; he audits all the accounts 
of the twelve normal schools of the state ; he has unlimited 
authority over the examination and certification of teachers ; 
he regulates the official action of the school commissioners 
in all of the assembly districts of the state ; he appoints the 
teachers' institutes, arranges the work, names the instruc- 
tors, and pays the bills. He determines the boundaries 
of school districts; he provides schools for the defective 
classes and for the seven Indian reservations yet remaining 
in the state. He may condemn schoolhouses and require 
new ones to be built ; he may direct new furnishings to be 
provided. He is a member of the board of trustees of Cor- 
nell University. He may entertain appeals, by any person 
conceiving himself aggrieved, from any order or proceeding 
of local school officials, determine the practice therein, and 
make final disposition of the matter in dispute, and his 
decision cannot be " called in question in any court or in 
any other place." 

All this unquestionably provides New York with a more 
complete and elaborate educational organization than that 
of any other American state. There are some who think 
that it is more elaborate and authoritative than necessary ; 
that it unduly overrides local freedom and discourages in- 
dividual initiative. It does not, but it is certainly excep- 
tional among the states. Most of them undertake to regu- 
late school affairs but very little. In the larger number of 
cases the state board of education administers only the 
schools maintained directly by the state, and the principal 
functions of the leading; educational official of the state are 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 31 

merely to inspire action through his addresses and to gather 
statistics and disseminate information deducible therefrom. 

However, there can be no doubt about the general ten- 
dency being strongly towards greater centralization. Not 
only are its advantages quite apparent, but the overwhelm- 
ing current of legislation and of the decisions of the courts is 
making it imperative. These are practically in accord, and 
are to the effect that in each state the school system is not 
local, but general ; not individual schools controlled by sep- 
arate communities, but a closely related system of schools 
which has become a state system and is entirely under state 
authority. Local school officials are now uniformly held to 
be agents of the state for the administration of a state 
system of education. 

Widely dissimilar conditions lead different states to a 
greater or lesser appreciation of their educational responsi- 
bilities and make them more or less able or disposed to exer- 
cise their legal functions to the full measure of their good. 
Yet all are appreciating the fact that a constitutional, self- 
governing state exists for the moral and intellectual advan- 
tage of every citizen and for the common progress of the 
whole mass. All are moving according to the Hght they 
have, in fulfillment of wise public policy and constitutional 
obligation. They have employed and will continue to em- 
ploy different methods. Some will act directly through 
state officials; some will delegate a large measure of 
authority to local boards and officials so long as it seems 
well ; but all have the highest authority, the supreme respon- 
sibility in the matter, and under the influence of the later 
.knowledge will rectify mistakes and take whatever new 
steps may be necessary to carry the best educational op- 
portunities to every child. 

The federal government has never exercised any control 
over the public educational work of the country. But it may 



32 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

be said with emphasis that that government has never been 
indifferent thereto. It has shown its interest at different 
times by generous gifts to education, and by the organiza- 
tion of a bureau of education for the purpose of gathering 
the fullest information from all the states, and from for- 
eign nations as well, and for disseminating data to all 
who may be interested. 

The gifts of the United States to the several states to en- 
courage schools have been in the form of land grants from 
the public domain. In the sale of public lands the practice 
of reserving one lot in every township "for the mainte- 
nance of pubhc schools within the township " has uniformly 
been followed. In 1786 officers of the revolutionary army 
petitioned Congress for the right to settle territory north 
and west of the Ohio River. A committee reported a bill in 
favor of granting the request, which provided that one sec- 
tion in each township should be reserved for common 
schools, one section for the support of religion, and four 
townships for the support of a university. This was modi- 
fied so as to give one section for the support of religion, one 
for common schools, and two townships for the support of 
a "literary institution to be applied to the intended object by 
the legislature of the state." This provision, coupled with 
the splendid declaration that " religion, morality and know- 
ledge being necessary to good government and the happi- 
ness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall 
forever be encouraged," foreshadowed the general dispo- 
sition and policy of the central government and made the 
"Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest 
Territory " as famous as it was fundamental. The precedent 
here established became national policy, and after the year 
1800 each state admitted to the Union, with the excep- 
tion of Maine, Texas, and West Virginia, received two or 
more townships of land for the founding of a university. 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 33 

In 1836 Congress passed an act distributing to the sev- 
eral states certain surplus funds in the treasury. In all 
$28,101,645 was so distributed, and in a number of the 
states this was devoted to educational uses. 

But the most noble, timely, and carefully guarded gift of 
the federal government was embodied in the land grant 
act of 1862 for colleges of agriculture and the mechanic 
arts. This act gave to each state thirty thousand acres of 
land for each senator and representative in Congress to 
which the state was entitled under the census of 1860, for 
the purpose of founding " at least one college where the lead- 
ing object shall be, without excluding other scientific and 
classical studies, and including military tactics, to teach 
such branches of learning as are related to agriculture and 
the mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the 
states shall respectively prescribe, in order to promote the 
liberal education of the industrial classes in the several 
pursuits and professions of life." This gift has been added 
to by other congressional enactments, and the proceeds of 
the sales of lands have been generously supplemented by 
the state legislatures until great colleges and universities 
have arisen in all of the states. 

The work of the United States bureau of education is a 
most exact, stimulating, and beneficent one. Without ex- 
ercising any authority, it is untir ng and scientific in gather- 
ing data, in the philosophic treatment of educational sub- 
jects, and in furnishing the fullest information upon every 
conceivable phase of educational activity to whomsoever 
will accept it. Its operations have by no means been con- 
fined to the United States. It has become the great educa- 
tional clearing house of the world. The commissioners who 
have been at the head of this bureau have been eminent 
men and great educational leaders. Under such fortunate 
direction the bureau of education has collected the facts 



34 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and made most painstaking research into every movement 
in America and elsewhere which gave promise of advantage 
to the good cause of popular education. 

So, while the government of the United States is not 
chargeable under the Constitution with providing or super- 
vising schools, and while it does not exercise authority in 
the matter, it will be quickly seen that it has been steadily 
and intelligently and generously true to the national in- 
stinct to advance morality and promote culture by its in- 
fluence and its resources. 

Up to this time we have been treating of the American 
public school system, using the term in its strictest sense. 
We have been referring to the schools supported by public 
moneys and supervised by public oflScers. Yet there is an 
infinite number of other schools which comprise an impor- 
tant part of the educational system of the country and are 
of course subject to its laws. Any statement concerning 
American school organization and administration, even of 
the most general character, would be incomplete which did 
not cover these ; but obviously it is not desirable in this con- 
nection to do more than touch upon the relation in which 
they stand, by common usage and under the laws, to Ameri- 
can education. 

In the first half of the nineteenth century many private 
"academies" or "seminaries" sprang up in all directions 
where the country had become at all settled. This was in 
response to a demand from ambitious people who could not 
get what they wanted in the common schools. Any teacher 
with a little more than ordinary gifts could open one of 
these schools upon a little higher plane than usual and very 
soon have plenty of pupils and a profitable income. Many 
of these institutions did most excellent work. Not a few of 
the leading citizens of the country owe their first inspira- 
tion and help to them. The larger part of these schools 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 35 

served their purpose and finally gave way to new public 
high schools. Some yet remain and continue to meet the 
desires of well-to-do families who prefer their somewhat 
exclusive ways. A considerable number have been adopted 
by their states and developed into state normal schools, and 
not a few have by their own natural force grown into liter- 
ary colleges. 

The earlier American colleges were, in the beginning, in 
a large sense the children of the state. Yale, Harvard, 
Princeton, Columbia, were all chartered by and in some 
measure supported by their states at the start, and are yet 
subject to the law, though they have become independent 
of such support. As their purposes are of the best, they 
have become a law unto themselves. A vast number of 
colleges has been established by the religious denomina- 
tions for the training of their ministry, and, so far as pos- 
sible, for giving all their youth a higher education while 
keeping them under their denominational influence. 

In recent years innumerable schools have arisen out of 
private enterprise. Every conceivable interest has produced 
a school to promote its own ends, which is accordingly ad- 
justed to its own thought. So, professional, technical, in- 
dustrial, and commercial schools of every kind have sprung 
up on every hand. 

All such schools operate by the tacit leave of the states 
in which they exist. The states are not disposed to inter- 
fere with them, as they ask no public support. Some of 
them hold charters granted by the legislature, and more of 
them secure legal standing by organizing under gen- 
eral corporation laws enacted to cover all such enterprises. 
In some cases the states distribute public moneys to some 
of these institutions by way of encouragement, and perhaps 
impose certain conditions upon which they shall be eligible 
to share in such distributions. But ordinarily a state does 



36 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

no more than protect its own good name against occasional 
impostors. 

The tendency to regulate private schools by legislation, to 
the extent at least of seeing that they are not discreditable 
to the state, is unmistakable. New York, for example, has 
prohibited the use of the name "college" or "university" 
except when the equipment and endowment are sufficient 
and the requirements of the state board of regents are met. 
All of the reputable institutions — and they constitute 
nearly the whole number — desire reasonable supervision, 
for it certifies their respectability and constitutes them a 
part of the pubUc educational system of the state. 

An exceedingly important phase of the American school 
system which distinguishes that system from any other 
national system of education, and which has come to be 
well established in our laws, must not be overlooked ; that 
is, supervision by professional experts, both generally and 
locally. 

From the beginning the laws have provided methods for 
certificating persons deemed to be quahfied to teach in the 
schools. This has ordinarily been among the functions of 
state, city, and county superintendents or commissioners. 
Sometimes boards of examiners have been created whose 
only duty should be to examine and certificate teachers. 
The functions of certificating and of employing teachers 
have, for obvious reasons, not commonly been lodged in 
the same officials. Superintendents were early provided 
for by law. The first state superintendency was established 
by New York in 1812. Other states took similar action 
in the next thirty years. Town, city, and county superin- 
tendencies were afterward provided for. 

The main duty of these officials in the earlier days was 
to examine candidates for teaching, report statistics, and 
make addresses on educational occasions. In later years, 



DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL SYSTEM 37 

however, they are held in considerable measure responsible 
for the quality of the teaching. In the country districts the 
superintendents hold institutes, visit the schools, commend 
and criticise the teaching, and exert every effort to promote 
the efficiency of the schools. A discreet and active county 
superintendent comes to exert almost a controlling influ- 
ence over the school affairs of his county. 

In the cities, and particularly the larger ones, the prob- 
lem is much more difficult. There are many more 
teachers, and the task of securing persons of uniform ex- 
cellence is much enlarged. The schools are less homogene- 
ous and instruction less easy. Frequently the superintend- 
ent cannot know the personal qualities of each teacher, or 
even visit all of the schools. The laws are coming to recog- 
nize the responsibihties and difficulties of the superintend- 
ent's position, and are continually throwing about that 
officer additional safeguards and giving him larger powers 
and greater freedom of action. The great issue that is now 
on in American school affairs is between education and 
politics. The school men are insisting upon absolute im- 
munity from political influence in their work. Pure demo- 
cracy has its troubles. The machinations of men who are 
seeking political influence constitute the most serious of 
them. However, the good cause of education against po- 
litical manipulation is making substantial progress. The 
statute books of all the states show provisions recogniz- 
ing the professional school superintendent ; in many of the 
states they contain provisions directing and protecting his 
work; and in some of them they are beginning to confer 
upon him entire authority over the appointment, assign- 
ment, and removal of teachers, while they impose upon 
him entire responsibility for the quality of the teaching. 

It is this professional supervision, by states and counties 
as well as by towns and cities, taken up almost spontane- 



38 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ously at the beginning, and early established and compen- 
sated by law, which has given the American schools their 
pecuHar spirit. As intelligence has advanced and the peo- 
ple have come to know the worth of good teaching and have 
been unwilhng that their children should be associated with 
teachers who have not the kindly spirit of a true teacher, or 
be kept marking time by incompetents, they have favored 
larger exactions and closer supervision over the teaching, to 
the end that it might be in accord with the best educational 
opinion. All this is yearly becoming more and more appar- 
ent in the laws, and it is advancing the great body of Ameri- 
can teachers along philosophical lines steadily and rapidly. 
American teachers have always had freedom. Now they 
are learning to exercise it, and they are being permitted 
to exercise it only in accord with educational principles. 

The American school system is a product of conditions in 
a new land, and it is adapted to those conditions. It is 
expressive of the American spirit, and it is energizing, 
culturing, and ennobling that spirit. It is settling down to 
an orderly and symmetrical institution, it is becoming sci- 
entific, and it is doing its work efficiently. It exerts a telHng 
influence upon every person in the land, and is proving 
that it is supplying an education broad enough to become 
the support of free institutions. 



Ill 

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 

In the complex system of government set up in the United 
States, the sovereign authority is lodged in different places. 
It always flows from the people. It is equably distributed 
among the three great coordinate departments of both our 
state and federal governments. It is divided exclusively be- 
tween the governments of the states and the government of 
the Union. Counties, cities, towns, districts, have no sover- 
eign authority. So much of the sovereign authority as does 
not rest with the general government does rest with the 
states. As between the United States and the states, the 
division is clean cut and is upon the basis of subjects. In 
this division matters educational are left to the authority of 
the states, and it logically follows that, upon such matters, 
that authority is complete. 

The United States is powerless to control and does not 
assume to manage the educational interests of the people; 
the states have full authority to do so. 

Cities and towns and districts have no power in them- 
selves to erect schools. The original theory that education 
is a matter of private or parental concern was abandoned 
with the advent of manhood suffrage, or as soon as the 
power of the voter began to be felt. The later theory that 
government might appropriately encourage education by 
gifts, and ought to see that the children of the poor are given 
the privileges of the schools, has been supplemented by the 
broader and nobler theory that the state is bound to exercise 
its sovereign prerogative to take so much of the property of 
the people as may be necessary to provide the best educa- 



40 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tional facilities which the world's experience has devised 
for every child, not as a benefaction, but in satisfaction of 
the natural and inherent rights of American citizenship. 
And this is equally for the good of the citizen and for the 
security of the state. The only instrument with which this 
theory is or can be carried out is the sovereign power of 
direct taxation, and that power vests in the state govern- 
ment exclusively. 

The power which can levy taxes is bound to see that the 
taxes are wisely used to advance the common good. There 
is a wide difference between the people of a local commu- 
nity being a law unto themselves and being the supporters 
and executors of a general pohcy of the state. There is 
abundant play for "home rule" in wisely carrying out the 
fundamental principles of the whole people. No home 
rule can be accepted which is not in line with general rule 
or is not wise rule; certainly this is true in matters edu- 
cational. 

The functions of an American state touching education 
run into every instrumentality which makes for physical, 
intellectual, and moral advancement in harmonious com- 
pany. They have rapidly multiplied in recent years, and 
they will continue to multiply. 

It is fundamental, as we have already seen, that the state 
is bound to see that a suitable elementary school is main- 
tained within reach of every home, and, to have a suitable 
school, a house must be provided which is sufficient and 
which is hygienically above reproach. The school must be 
in the hands of one who can teach, and its work must be in 
harmony with such general plans as lead toward ideal re- 
sults. This means much in the way of general authority, 
and it points to an infinite variety of details. It involves the 
making of plans, the nourishing of a system to its fullest 
completeness and eflfectiveness ; and it involves the exercise 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 41 

of the power of general taxation and the right of local di- 
rection. It makes necessary a knowledge of the world's 
ripest experience touching schoolhouses, the training and 
treatment of school-teachers, and the trend and quality of 
school work. All this implies knowledge and powers which 
are not to be supposed to be common in local communities, 
for the knowledge is expert and the powers are general. 
Unless the state is moving, the purposes of the state are not 
being fulfilled. The state which is not inspecting and im- 
proving its schoolhouses ; which is not preparing, regulating, 
and advancing its teaching service; which ife not shaping 
and stimulating and systematizing the work of its schools, 
through a department of the state government, and through 
universal expert supervision, to which it has given a dignity 
of standing and authority sufficient to justify the theories 
upon which its every act is taken, is a state whose govern- 
ment is in hands that are nerveless, or whose people are 
strangely and basely indifferent to the evolution of educa- 
tional thought and to the stern logic of educational events. 
It is the function of the state to define the platform upon 
which the public schools stand and promulgate the theories 
upon which they operate. It is to keep their territory free 
from religious intolerance while it advances the common be- 
lief in the reahty of a living and omniscient God. It is to 
banish partisanship from the council chamber. It is to 
train teachers. It is to let experienced teachers determine 
the fitness of beginners. It is to lay stress upon spirit and 
adaptation as well as upon readiness to answer troublesome 
conundrums. It is to put teachers upon the merit basis ; let 
the incompetent resign; absolve the successful from fre- 
quent examinations and from competition with the worth- 
less in the matter of pay ; assure them immunity from har- 
assing annoyances, and guarantee them entire security of 
position, while directing their intellectual activity and stim- 



42 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ulatlng their moral sense so that the whole bod j may con- 
tinually advance to a higher and yet higher plane of profes- 
sional standing and usefulness. 

It is to keep the work upon scientific lines, — anchored 
to earth, yet abreast of the world's matured thought. It 
should do things as well as discuss them. It should 
make brain culture and spirit culture easier and more 
far-reaching through the exercise of the eye and the use 
of the hand, and it should dignify the manual industries 
by putting a knowledge of good English and an appetite 
for learning behind them. It should make the work of the 
schools ethical as well as intellectual. They must know the 
history and the traditions of the race, that they may inspire 
respect for the institutions of human society. They must 
know the value of free thought, but they must remember 
that the quantity of real liberty which people enjoy is likely 
to be proportioned to the quantity of restraint they will suf- 
fer, if the schools would fulfill their mission and develop 
respect for the law, while they impress upon youth the in- 
valuable prerogatives of American citizenship and the aw- 
ful responsibility of the exercise of governmental power. 

Advanced learning has always been the forerunner of the 
best elementary schools. It is not the lower schools which 
sustain the higher schools, but it is the high schools which 
lift up the primary and grammar schools. There are few 
communities in America so benighted as to make no pre- 
tense of sustaining some sort of an elementary school. It 
may be a very poor affair, — afflicted with ignorance and 
poverty in the country and encompassed with indifference 
and politics and greed in the city ; but everywhere there will 
be found some show of an elementary school. The problem 
is to get that school upon a rational basis, put bad and un- 
scientific teaching out of it, and make it a centre of life and 
power. It is a great problem, because the people who are 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 43 

willing to accept anything in the name of teaching, and 
who cannot discriminate between the good and the bad, are 
innumerable. Many agencies must combine to solve this 
problem, and of these the most effectual has been, and will 
continue to be, a well-organized system of high schools, 
surmounted by the colleges and crowned by the universi- 
ties. The college and the university will fix the plane of the 
high school, and the high school will, in turn, determine 
the character of the elementary schools. 

There is no more gratifying sign upon the field of Ameri- 
can education than the extent to which the children of the 
people are thinking of getting through the high school and 
then going to college and the university. Despite the aid 
which the national government has given to it, the higher 
learning is the child of the sovereign power of the state, 
rather than of the United States. The high schools are 
more than likely to owe their existence or their vitality to 
the inspiring oversight and the nourishing support of the 
state, and, regardless of the national gifts, the state univer- 
sities have resulted from the initiative, and are dependent 
upon the support, of the states. And fortunate indeed is 
the commonwealth which has statesmanship capable of 
seeing that the way to build its future greatness is upon 
foundations of liberal learning. 

Upon principle, and as the result of experience, the state 
is bound to give the school system independent autonomy. 
There is nothing in the written law to prevent the lawmak- 
ers of the state from using the board of aldermen to admin- 
ister so much of the state educational system as relates to a 
given city, but there is no lack of reasons against it. The 
reasons against a mixed system of administration are no 
less cogent than against school administration by the board 
of aldermen exclusively. Indeed, it is unquestionably better 
that some one shall have undivided authority and responsi- 



44 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

bility. There is no constitutional prohibition against the 
state legislature assuming to require professors in state 
universities and normal schools, and the conductors of 
teachers' institutes, to pass examinations by the state civil 
service board, whose function it is to pass upon the intel- 
lectual acumen of candidates for clerkships in the depart- 
ments ; nor is there any such prohibition against the super- 
intendents, supervisors, and teachers in the great cities 
being required to satisfy the minds of the municipal civil 
service board, whose mission it is to see how patriots in 
quest of municipal support can read and write and cipher. 
But there is a prohibitory law of common sense in the way 
of it. The proposition is absurd. Indeed, it is worse. It is 
so vicious, so opposed to the spirit which must pervade the 
schools — if they are to be worth the having at the present 
cost — that the mere suggestion should call every intelli- 
gent citizen to his feet. It is idle to mince matters. There 
are some educational storm centres in the country, and 
there are considerable areas where the indications are 
threatening. The schools will be mere forms, deadening 
instead of life-giving, unless the system is complete, unless 
it stands upon its own footing and is independent of oppos- 
ing forces, unless the different parts support one another, 
unless there is a symmetrical whole resting upon the ne- 
cessities and supported by the authority of the state, and 
unless the whole is administered by genuine friends, who 
are chosen because of their adaptation to the service, is 
universally supervised by pedagogical experts, and is gener- 
ally taught by professional teachers. 

It is an important function of the state to equalize school 
privileges throughout its jurisdiction. The state is also 
bound to seek to equalize taxation for the ordinary running 
expenses of the schools. Those who are educationally or 
financially strong must be required to help the weak. The 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 45 

good results outside the state must be made known in it. 
Good teachers in other states are to be encouraged to come 
into it. The latest information is to be diffused, and the 
best facilities extended in all directions, and all the property 
of the state's population is to bear the expense as equitably 
as may be, if there be common educational fellowship and 
general intellectual advancement. It is particularly the 
business of the state to insure this. 

But the state has functions touching education which go 
beyond the organization and administration of the public 
schools, unless we include in the public school system, as 
perhaps we should, the institutions of learning erected 
upon private foundations and operated with the common 
approbation. It goes without saying that the man or wo- 
man whose wealth and sense have combined to establish a 
college or university, without placing un-American condi- 
tions upon the gift, is a benefactor of the state. Of course 
such gifts are to be encouraged, and resulting institutions 
are to be brought into sympathetic and cooperative rela- 
tions with the general educational system of the common- 
wealth. In better phrase, perhaps, they are to become part 
and parcel of that system. The same may be said of legiti- 
mate private educational enterprises, even though they may 
be operated for gain. They may round out the state educa- 
tional system to more perfect symmetry and completeness. 
Benevolence or private enterprise can do things which are 
very desirable in the educational work of a great state, but 
which the taxing power cannot do. They are to be thanked 
and their undertakings made effective. 

But educational quackery is to be prohibited and pun- 
ished; and educational quackery is running riot. The 
frauds which are imposing upon the credulity and taking 
the money of the people under high-sounding educa- 
tional names should be closed up, and punished with a 



46 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

strong hand. All states may well follow the lead of New 
York in fining and imprisoning people who use the title 
"college" or "university," or who presume to confer the 
time honored educational degrees, except with the appro- 
bation of constituted educational authorities. The duty of 
guarding the gateway to the learned professions, and of 
putting a stop to the miserable attempts to build profes- 
sional expertness upon little or nothing, is a duty which 
rests upon the state. In short, it falls upon the sovereign 
power to encourage the worthy and visit its wrath upon the 
wicked, in educational as in all other directions. 

The state has educational functions beyond the mainte- 
nance of the schools. It is bound to help on whatever con- 
tributes to the sound information and promotes the culture 
of the people. Voluntary assemblages are to be encouraged. 
Discussion and publicity are the safety valves of democratic 
society. Home study is to be aided and guided. Local 
libraries may well be subsidized, if need be, at least up to 
the point where they can stand alone. The state which can 
put a mark upon its map wherever there is a town or village 
library, and find its map well covered, will take care of 
itself. Art collections are upon the same footing as Ubra- 
ries. That state is a great state whose leading public men 
give genuine support, not a support born of ignorance and 
the lack of courage to refuse, but a sympathetic support, to 
scientific research, in the hope of still further breaking the 
bonds of scientific truth and hastening the time when the 
truth shall make the whole world free. That state will out- 
run its neighbors which will give a strong and willing hand 
to the good cause of industrial and decorative art. It is 
peculiarly within the functions of the state to aid and pro- 
mote architecture. Public buildings are worth more than 
they cost, jobbery and all, if they are architecturally effec- 
tive. What could not a state do for the common culture by 



THE FUNCTIONS OF THE STATE 47 

making sure that every schoolhouse is erected upon ar- 
tistic lines ? All this, and more, is clearly within the prov- 
ince of the self-governing state. 

One may ask if this does not savor too strongly of pater- 
nalism, and leave little or nothing to the initiative of the 
people. It has no flavor of paternal government about it. 
There is no element of it which contributes to the support 
of the people in any instance. It does not trench so much as 
the breadth of a hair upon the sound doctrine that the peo- 
ple must support the government and not count upon the 
government to support the people. It leaves everything to 
the initiative of the people. It interdicts nothing. Every 
man is free to do what he will, if it is not inconsistent with 
the common rights and opposed to the common weal. In- 
deed, all acts of democratic government are upon the initi- 
ative of the people. It inspires individual initiative and en- 
courages every individual impulse toward the promotion of 
the common good. It stands in the way of nothing but 
ignorance and selfishness, and it stops nothing but in- 
terference with the common interests by overgrown local 
officialism. There is little danger that it will do that as 
completely as may be desired. 

The purpose of the American states certainly looks to the 
common security ; but it looks infinitely further. In frame- 
work and in object they are striving to afford the fullest 
opportunity for individual improvement, and assure the 
uniform intellectual and moral advancement of the whole 
mass. Their constitutions are more representative of the 
growth of constitutional freedom, and its resulting incen- 
tives to the intellectual and moral evolution of the multi- 
tudes, than any other written documents in the history of 
the human race. Throughout the Union these constitutions 
have marked similarity. Those of the newer states are, in 
the essentials, modeled upon those of the older ones, and 



48 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

those of the older states, antedating the federal Consti- 
tution, and of infinitely wider scope, were built upon 
the great charters of English liberty. They were but- 
tressed by the decisions of the English common-law courts, 
and enlightened and enriched by the ideals of a God- 
fearing people, with able and undaunted leaders, who did 
their work in the midst of, or soon after, a successful war 
for independence, and were, therefore, resentful of interfer- 
ence and jealous of their prerogatives, and were moving 
in a new land with no associations or traditions to place the 
slightest limitation upon their action. Adopted directly by 
the people, they are incapable of amendment except by 
the vote of the people. In breadth and scope, in the spirit 
which they manifest, and the opportunities for good which 
they offer, there is nothing else in the written law of the 
world, and never has been, to compare with them. They 
open the way for the highest possibilities. The people of 
these states may do whatsoever they think best for the com- 
mon good, so long as they respect the rights of conscience 
and give no special privileges to indi\aduals or to classes. 
They are expected to do it because they have been given 
the commission to do it. They are to do it in the only way 
they have for assuring results, that is, by general plans of 
their own, through executive officers and agents chosen as 
they think best, and responsible directly to the state, which 
is the exclusive possessor of the only power which can do it 
at all. They will hardly consent to turn aside from doing 
it because of personal or local objections, for they will be 
likely to remember that, if the scope of our plan is unpre- 
cedented, the measure of our ultimate success or our dismal 
humiliation will be unprecedented also. 



IV 

THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 

The term "public schools" has a special and technical 
meaning. It designates schools supported by general tax- 
ation, managed by public officers, taught by teachers hav- 
ing legal authority ; institutions in which all the people have 
entire equality of responsibility and of right. It is the pur- 
pose here to consider the constitutional, the statutory, and 
the common law relations which these institutions sustain 
to our system of government, to our civil organization in 
its various departments, and to citizenship in the country. 

The American public school is a unique institution. It is 
true that some of its characteristics are from time to time 
being copied in other countries. The common schools of 
France and Germany are essentially free. But the distin- 
guishing features of our public schools do not, and in the 
nature of things cannot, obtain in other lands without revo- 
lutionary changes in their systems of government and in 
the thought of the people. The common schools of America 
have been of gradual growth, and have come to their pres- 
ent state only in recent years. That state has been evolved 
out of the intelligence and the experience of our people as 
well as out of the necessities of our plan of government. 
We tax all people and all property for the support of our 
schools, and we take the management of the schools into 
the public hands for the protection of property and the 
safety of the government. It is the outworking of our 
democracy. 

Civil liberty and self-government are dependent upon 
the strength and successful operation of certain guaranties 



50 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of rights and checks upon power which the text-writers call 
"institutions." Each of these institutions has an autonomy 
of its own, an individuahty and a completeness by itself. 
Taken separately, these institutions will not avail much to 
promote the public weal, but taken collectively, acting as a 
system, they will support the temple of liberty. The more 
of them there are, the more firmly will they support it. 
Institutions spring from conscience and intelligence, and 
are the result of years, frequently of centuries, of growth 
and development. The more substantial they become, that 
is, the more strongly rooted in the intelligence and con- 
science of the people, the greater and the more enduring 
will the liberty be. 

Institutions do not ordinarily owe their existence to any 
express law, but arise spontaneously out of existing condi- 
tions and circumstances. In time, self-grown usage and 
positive legislation mingle with each other in determining 
their character and the scope and nature of their work and 
influence. So it has been with our public schools. In the 
beginning, the schools were purely private enterprises for" 
gain, or were supported by charity, either private or pubUc. 
As the population has advanced and become more and 
more heterogeneous in character, the necessity of govern- 
mental support and supervision has become more and more 
manifest, until, by a gradual process, the schools have 
reached their present status. That status is fixed and de- 
fined by a body of laws, arising out of common custom and 
long usage, written in the constitutions and statutes of the 
country, construed and declared by the determinations of 
authorized courts and ofiicers. 

The schools or their concerns have not been in issue in 
the federal courts to any extent and then only collaterally. 
The only determinations of interest by the United States 
courts, as fixing the status of the public schools, are those 



THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 51 

construing the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, 
known as the Civil Rights Clause. These decisions ex- 
pressly recognize and declare the right and duty of the 
states to provide for and manage schools, but hold that the 
federal authority will intervene to insure equal advan- 
tages to both races. It is held that the two races may be 
provided for in separate schools, the classification being 
left to state authority, so long as schools for colored chil- 
dren are as good as those provided for whites. (Berton- 
neau v. Directors, etc., 3 Woods, 177.) 

In another case a United States court enjoined and for- 
bade the payment to a school used exclusively for white 
children of such portion of the state school moneys as was 
apportioned upon the basis of colored children of school 
age residing in the district. (Claybrook v. Owenboro, 23 
Fed. Rep., 634.) 

Again, where a city levied a tax for school purposes but 
provided that money collected from whites should be used 
only for white children's schools, and money collected from 
colored persons, only for schools for colored children, the 
result of which was to afford enlarged facilities for one class 
as against the other, it was held that the arrangement was 
in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and unconstitu- 
tional. Taxation must be equitable and facilities equal. 
(Claybrook v. Owenboro, 16 Fed. Rep., 297.) 

But only in the enforcement of the Civil Rights Clause 
of the Constitution, and then only incidentally and for the 
same reason that they would look into the acts of common 
carriers, places of amusement or of entertainment, or any 
other interest in which all inhabitants have common rights, 
and by express provision of the federal Constitution are 
entitled " to the equal protection of the laws," do the United 
States courts take any cognizance of the management of 
the pubhc schools. 



52 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Upon the several states does our governmental policy 
devolve the duty of supporting and supervising common 
schools, and as the duty of the states to promote education 
is declared in their constitutions, so the manner in which 
they severally perform that duty is found in their statute 
laws and in the decisions of their courts and officers. Even 
a casual study of these brings out in the most interesting 
way the different stages in the development of our free 
public schools. By a gradual process of change, the tuition 
fees have been abolished ; the idea of charity to such as 
were unable to pay tuition has been discarded ; the high- 
est power of the state has been exercised to raise taxes 
for free schools ; the tax levy has been increased from time 
to time in order to provide still larger accommodations 
and still ^better equipment; and permanent funds have 
been established and added to in order to protect against 
any possible emergency. On the other hand, the super- 
vision of the state has gradually become closer and closer. 
It is destined to become much more so. The schools have 
been related to one another under county or district super- 
visory officers, and the whole body in the state has been 
brought under the general supervision of state superin- 
tendents or boards. The state determines the character 
and the powers of the boards of education in the cities, 
as it does the number and size of the districts in the 
county. It controls the character of the buildings ; it says 
who may teach and what shall be taught. It says who 
may attend, and it frequently, also, says who shall at- 
tend. It collects statistics for the guidance of its law- 
makers, to the end that the whole system may be so di- 
rected as to produce the best results for all the people. 

It does not leave the matter to the uncertain care of local 
communities. By a wise policy of local administration, in 
full accord with our American self-governing way of doing 



THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 53 

public business, it leaves certain matters to the qualified 
electors, or officers chosen by them, in each city or dis- 
trict, and thus it educates the people to self-government, 
and ordinarily produces schools best suited to the needs 
of each locality. But it leaves no more of this power to 
each locality than experience shows it may with safety, 
and not hazard its general policy to maintain schools in 
character with its general system, free and accessible to 
all the people. It encourages each locality to raise local 
moneys for school purposes, but, through state school 
funds, it makes sure that schools of its own creation and 
subject to its own management shall dot the face of its 
entire territory, whether they are enlarged and improved 
by additional local taxation or not. 

It is expressly declared that, while the schools are not 
national, neither are they local institutions. Rather they 
are state institutions, maintained and controlled by the 
state that they may contribute to its greatness and the 
happiness of all the people by assuring an education to 
every one. 

It is not only enunciated in a general policy which has 
obtained in every commonwealth and found illustration 
in common usage, but it is expressly declared in the statutes, 
in the debates and acts of the lawmakers, and in the de- 
cisions of the courts. The constitution of the state of 
New York provides that no person shall be eligible to the 
legislature who is "an officer under a city government." 
A case in point is that of a member of the board of edu- 
cation of the city of Albany who was elected to the legisla- 
ture and whose seat was contested on the ground that he 
was not eligible because of the constitutional provision 
referred to. Although the charter of the city of Albany 
enumerated members of the board of education among 
the city officers, the legislative committee on privileges 



54 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and elections, after the fullest argument by counsel, re- 
ported unanimously that a member of a board of educa- 
tion of a city was in no sense a city officer, but was an agent 
of the state, engaged in carrying on the educational system 
and policy of the state, and, therefore, not within the con- 
stitutional limitation, and the report was approved in the 
Assembly by all parties and without a division. 

It has been held in the courts that the trustees of school 
districts are neither city, county, town, nor village officers. 
(People V. Bennett, 54 Barb., 480.) 

In an action brought against the city of New York for 
the acts of an officer of the board of education of that city, 
it was decided in the court of last resort, after a stubborn 
contest, that the city was not liable, as it had no control 
over the board of education, and could not be held liable 
for the acts of any of its officers or agents. (Ham v. The 
Mayor, etc., 70 N. Y., 459.) 

These are not isolated cases; there are many of them. 
They are not peculiar to New York; the principle is the 
same everywhere, and will be found enunciated in the judi- 
cial decisions of all the states. 

Then, too, the public schools of each state have become 
related to one another in a common system or organization 
maintained, supervised, and controlled by the authority 
of the state government, pursuant to constitutional and 
statutory provisions, with such additional local help as 
the people of localities will voluntarily extend. They are 
supported by general taxation, and are free to all children 
within specified ages, and together form one of the institu- 
tions which guarantee the liberties of a self-governing people. 

The precise legal status of this institution in each state 
is necessarily dependent upon the provisions of the sev- 
eral state constitutions and statutes. It is, of course, not 
possible in this connection to attempt any examination, 



THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 55 

in detail, of these different systems of laws. The differ- 
ent states inherited a common jurisprudence. Naturally 
enough they have extended it along the same general lines. 
Legislation has been copied. Like conditions beget similar 
legislation and similar construction and interpretation of 
the same. The school laws of the newer states have been 
largely copied on the models furnished by the older ones, 
and the decisions of the older have been commonly ac- 
cepted in the newer. Therefore, there are certain prin- 
ciples common to the entire country, which may be set 
forth as fixing and defining the legal status of the public 
schools. Indeed, it may be said that the laws concerning 
the school system of the country have a completeness in 
themselves; that the system stands upon its own basis 
and has an autonomy peculiar to itself. 

Persons charged by law with the management and su- 
pervision of the schools have authority to do all things 
necessary to promote the general purpose of the system. 
Subject to special statutory provisions, which vary but 
little in the main, they may provide buildings, purchase 
supplies, certify and employ teachers, fix the time of ses- 
sions, regulate the attendance of and classify pupils, de- 
termine the course of instruction each pupil must pursue, 
and do whatever else is incidental to the attainment of the 
general object of the institution. The schools do not stand 
helpless before the demands of individual parents. Patrons 
must conform to the system and not expect the system to 
conform to their individual whims. It must be assumed 
that the school system is more likely to determine rightly 
the mental development of the child, and is better quali- 
fied than the parent to say what classes it should enter and 
what studies it should pursue. If the particular teacher 
to whom the subject is presented falls into error, the ave- 
nue of appeal to the highest school authority is wide open. 



56 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

The parent who brings his child to the pubHc school must 
submit him to the arrangement and discipline of the school. 
Attendance of reasonable regularity and proper punctual- 
ity may be expected, and the child must be free from con- 
tagious diseases and in such a state of cleanliness as not 
to be injurious or obnoxious to other pupils, or he may 
be debarred from the privileges of the school. So, too, 
may a child be refused admission to the school, who is 
so vicious or morally impure as to be beyond control or 
likely to corrupt the lives of his associates. The thing al- 
ways to be kept in view is the interest and advantage of 
the great body of pupils who come in condition, physically 
and morally, fit for association with others, or who can be 
brought to such condition without the help of either the 
board of health or the police. The operations of these de- 
partments must be kept upon their own ground. If the 
school regulations, written or unwritten, are unreasonable, 
they may be called in question in the appropriate place 
and overridden ; if the school system itself requires modi- 
fication, it may be brought about either by legislation or 
election, as changes are ordinarily made in our public 
affairs in this country. But until modifications are made, 
the system as it is must be respected, and its regulations 
must be observed by all persons seeking its advantages 
or in any way coming in contact with it. 

On the other hand, the school system has responsibility 
and liability as well as authority. It is bound to provide 
suitable school buildings ; that is, buildings suited to their 
uses, and constructed and maintained with reference to 
the health and comfort of pupils. The public cannot as- 
sume the care of children in its schools without exercising 
caution in protecting them from physical harm. Discipline 
may be maintained by force if need be in places where 
a better way has not yet been learned. The common law 



THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 57 

of the land has always recognized the right of school au- 
thorities to inflict corporal punishment, and this rule has 
not yet been much interfered with by statute, although it 
has been to some extent by authorized local regulations. 
But where such punishment is inflicted, it must not be ex- 
cessive or brutal, or it becomes an assault which may be 
avenged both by the civil and criminal law. School officers 
ate subject to the same general rules of law as apply to 
all official conduct, though it must be admitted that they 
very commonly manifest a deplorable amount of igno- 
rance of the fact. They cannot be personally interested in 
any agreement or understanding to which they are offi- 
cially a party, without violating the criminal law. They 
are personally liable for any exercise of authority beyond 
that conferred upon them, as they are also for any loss 
to their city or district by reason of neglect of official duty. 
If this fact causes any surprise, it is only because of the 
extreme leniency with which school officers have been 
treated. Indeed, the legal liability of the public school 
system, its officers and teachers, is much greater than is 
generally understood, and must inevitably be still greater 
in the future, as the institution settles into more orderly 
and systematic methods of procedure, when its powers 
and obligations must become more thoroughly fixed and 
more completely enunciated and understood. 

The public schools stand in precisely the same relation 
not only to every citizen, but to every inhabitant of the 
land. What the high seas are to the sailor, what the king's 
highway is to the landsman, the public schools are to every 
child on the road to knowledge. Equality of obligation in 
maintenance, and equality of right in enjoyment, is 
the legend which the law would write across the front 
of every public schoolhouse. This road to learning is the 
common property of a people differing widely in intelli- 



58 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

gence, in traditions, in opinions, in morals, in means, in 
creeds ; differing even in the power to improve their condi- 
tions, and the power to influence circumstances about 
them. But no matter what one's rank or station, no mat- 
ter whether the president of a railway or the man who 
watches the track, no matter with what church he wor- 
ships or whether he worships at all, no matter whether a 
republican or a democrat, his legal obligations and his 
legal rights are as fixed and as inviolable in the schools as 
upon the public highway. In each case he must help make 
the road for all; in each case he must put nothing in it 
which will prevent or interfere with another's use ; in each 
case he must use it in a way consistent with like use by all 
the rest. 

Even more than this. The law forbids anything in con- 
nection with the public schools, which invalidates or 
abridges any of the rights of citizenship or of domicile 
guaranteed by our other American institutions. Moral 
development must inevitably accompany intellectual 
growth in training humanity for good citizenship. Every 
influence of the school-room promotes moral growth. A 
system which commands regularity and punctuality and 
cleanliness and studiousness and obedience; which exacts 
politeness and generosity towards associates and respect 
for authority; which arouses ambition and inspires cour- 
age; which exalts the truth and is administered with jus- 
tice ; which rests upon the hearts of a Christian people and 
reaches up into the realms of heaven, can, in its beneficent 
operations, produce nothing less than moral growth and 
development. The theologians will tell us that there is no 
sound morality which does not rest upon religious truth. 
It is safer for a layman to admit than to dispute it. If they 
are right, then the school system rests upon a foundation 
of religious truth. 



THE LEGAL BASIS OF THE SCHOOLS 59 

In any event, further than this the public cannot go. 
The high governmental power which levies and collects 
taxes cannot be invoked to promote or repress the inter- 
est of any section of the population, for any purpose less 
than the highest good of all. If the people will divide into 
sects, and they always will, then the special interests of 
each sect must be promoted by its own eflFort and at its 
own cost. 

If it be asked why this high power should be invoked to 
compel the support of a public school system when some 
sects or denominations object to educating their children 
in commofi schools and assert their desire and ability to 
assume the burden of such education, the answer is ready 
and it is this : it is not deemed prudent to leave the support 
and control of the schools to any power short of the govern- 
ment itself. It is not public policy to promote class and 
sect distinctions, but to build up and consolidate a homo- 
geneous people. Any division of educational responsibility 
along sectarian lines, or any failure to maintain public 
schools by the government and for all the people, pro- 
motes class interests, makes vicious teaching possible, 
endangers entire lack of school facilities in some quarters, 
leads away from our cherished traditions and our confi- 
dent belief. The public school is the logical and necessary 
sequence of our American plan. It is the essential accom- 
paniment of our other institutions. This is the deliberate 
conclusion of our people as declared in the words and in 
the manifest spirit and purpose of our law. 

It is an obligation resting upon government, as upon 
individuals, to foster and encourage all good works, of which 
education is by no means the least. But such is not the 
only relationship in which the public school system stands 
to the government in this country. Its life is dependent 
upon no such uncertainty as the faithful discharge of a 



60 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

moral obligation, either by individuals or that aggrega- 
tion of individuals called the government. It is warp and 
woof of our governmental system as much as the franchise, 
the judiciary, the post-oflBce, the militia, or the internal 
revenue service. In a legal sense, as well as a moral one, 
it is deemed more important than many of our other insti- 
tutions, for some of them could be dispensed with, while 
this one is believed vital to the endurance of a social organ- 
ization where the "will of the people is the law of the land." 
It rests upon conscience, and is the outcome of experience 
and forethought. It has a completeness by itself. It is 
hedged about by a system of laws, already well defined, but 
continually becoming more complete, harmonious, and sub- 
stantial. These laws impose equal obligations and pledge 
equal privileges. The system has all the power requisite 
to the attainment of its general purpose ; that is, the perma- 
nence of the state through good and intelligent citizenship. 
It may draw from the people the means for its support, 
and it may make all lawful regulations conducive to the 
desired results. It has responsibility as well as authority, 
a moral responsibility, perhaps above any other branch 
of the public service, and a legal accountability no less 
exacting than any other. Supported by all, and free to the 
use of all, there must be nothing about it to which any 
can object for conscience' sake, and each must use it so 
as not to interfere with Hke use by all the rest. 



ILLITERACY AND COMPULSORY 
ATTENDANCE 

Some one has said that America is a country where no one 
is compelled to do anything. Certain it is that the demo- 
cratic temperament is so universal in America that com- 
pulsory processes, save for interests that are generally 
thought to be imperative, are extremely difficult of execu- 
tion. This difficulty has been met wherever the effort has 
been made to secure or to enforce laws requiring attend- 
ance upon the schools. The cause is not to be attributed 
to any indifference to the importance of education, for 
in no land has the public recognition of this been more 
common or the provision for it been more universal and 
munificent ; the trouble has arisen from the disinchnation 
of legislators and administrative officers to compel the peo- 
ple in anything which is not clearly seen to be vital to the 
pubHc safety. So marked has this been that practically all 
effort to require general and regular attendance at school 
was left to the officers and teachers until the labor organi- 
zations came to their assistance for the purpose of lessen- 
ing the competitions with adult labor in the shops and the 
factories as well as for assuring schooling to the children 
of the wage earners. 

It is more than fifty years since school attendance laws 
were first enacted in this country, but not until very re- 
cently have they begun to take form which would make 
them effective. Commonly they have declared the duty 
of the citizen to send his children to school and the duty 
of the state to assure schooling to every child, but they 



62 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

have not fixed the ages within which all children must be 
in school, they have not required lists of all children in 
order to know that all are accounted for, they have not 
given point to the fact that a parent who robs a child of 
an education merits punishment until he wull be glad to 
perform a parent's and a citizen's duty, and they have 
not provided oflBcers seriously charged with the execution 
of attendance laws and punished them for failure to per- 
form their duties. 

Public sentiment not only produces statutes, it is pro- 
duced by them. The common thought of the masses is 
guided and seasoned by legislative enactments. If those 
enactments seem rational, if they spring from world ex- 
perience and are sustained by the opinions of publi- 
cists and statesmen, they are accepted by the people. If 
such enactments are executed with steadiness and uni- 
formity they consolidate sentiment and fix the common 
thought of the country. This process has been going on 
for many years in other lands less democratic than ours, 
until we are confronted with the serious fact that in many 
other countries the attendance upon the schools is 
not only far more general than here, but the necessity 
of schooling is much more universally recognized by the 
masses. 

The bureau of statistics at Berlin determines that of all 
the recruits in the German army in 1903, but one in 2500 
was illiterate. In Sweden and Norway it was but one in 
1250 ; in Denmark, one in 500 ; in Switzerland, one in 166 ; 
in Holland, one in 40; in France, one in 16. In 1902, in 
England and Scotland, one man in 40 and one woman in 
40 were unable to write their names when married. In 
other words, it seems that there are more than four times 
as many illiterates in the United States as there are in Eng- 
land and Scotland, and infinitely more than there are 



ILLITERACY 63 

in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and the German Em- 
pire. 

It is probably the fact that in Germany the law is so 
exact in its provisions and so uniformly enforced, and has 
therefore become so universally believed in by the people, 
that in the city of Berlin, with a million and a half of 
people, there are not at any time ten children out of school 
when they ought to be there. 

The necessity of having children in school has been 
inbred in the life and thought of the German people. 
All their plans are made to conform to it. The enforce- 
ment of laws or royal decrees for a long time has trained 
the common sentiment and resulted in a universal usage. 
It is thought as necessary to have children go to school 
regularly as to have them eat regularly. 

A fair beginning has just been made in this direction in 
America. Not only has a substantial advance been made 
in very recent years in the way of new legislation, but the 
necessities of the matter are being much more clearly 
recognized and the principles which must be incorporated 
in an attendance law to make it effective are much more 
generally understood. 

In the United States, Florida, Maryland (except the 
city of Baltimore), Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas 
have no school attendance laws whatever. 

Arkansas and Georgia, in their child labor laws, forbid 
the employment of any child under eighteen in the one 
case and under sixteen in the other, unless he shall have 
attended school twelve weeks during the previous year. In 
Alabama no child between twelve and sixteen shall be 
employed unless he shall attend school for eight weeks 
in every year of employment. 

The law of North Carolina exempts eleven counties by 
name, and is optional elsewhere upon a referendum vote 



64 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

by township or school district. The law of Virginia is 
optional upon a referendum vote by county, city, or 
town. 

Georgia has a special referendum law applying to 
Richmond County, North Carolina has a special law apply- 
ing to Goldsboro township in Wayne County, and Tennes- 
see has two special laws applying to Campbell and Scott 
counties, respectively. 
^ Thirty-eight states and two territories have compulsory 
attendance laws which are more or less effective. In 
practically all the states children from the age of seven 
or eight to that of fourteen, fifteen, or sixteen, are required 
to attend school for a portion or the whole of the school 
year. In Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, 
New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, 
Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Washington; in 
cities of the first class in Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky; 
in all city school districts of Nebraska and Michigan ; in 
St. Louis, Missouri, and in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the 
attendance within the required ages must be during all the 
time that the schools are in session. In New York it must 
be for eight months in all school districts having a popu- 
lation below five thousand. In each city or in each school 
district having a population of five thousand or more, and 
employing a superintendent of schools, attendance is re- 
quired during the entire period that the schools are in 
session. In Wisconsin, outside of Milwaukee, the period is 
eight months in the cities and six months in the rest of the 
state. In Vermont it is twenty-eight weeks. In California, 
it is five months, of which eighteen weeks must be con- 
secutive. In Utah it is twenty weeks, of which ten must 
be consecutive. In Colorado, Connecticut, Idaho, Iowa, 
Michigan, outside of the cities, Nebraska, except city school 
districts, Nevada, Virginia, South Dakota, and North 



^MUc( y^A^^vJ^ t ^Vvu^,<XI~^'V^'»^ 



ILLITERACY 65 

Carolina it is from twelve to eighteen weeks. In Kentucky 
outside the cities it is eight weeks. In Delaware the period 
is five months, which the authorities of a school district may 
reduce to not less than three. In Oklahoma the period is 
from three to six months in the discretion of the local 
school board. In Wyoming the period is six months. 

In the states having such laws violations are punished 
by fines varying from two dollars to one hundred dollars 
in amount. In California, Delaware, Indiana, cities of 
Kentucky, in Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, 
New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, 
Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming, the offender may be 
imprisoned. In New York, Delaware, Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, and Washington, the school moneys may be 
withheld from a city or district which neglects to enforce 
the law. 

About four fifths of our American illiterates were born, 
or their parents were born, among the most unfavored 
people of the Old World. But that fact must not lead us to 
suppose that we have but few illiterates born in this coun- 
try. The fact is, that in many of our states we have more 
illiterates whose parents are natives than those whose 
parents are foreign born. In New York in 1900 there 
were 29,188 of the former, and 18,162 of the latter. And 
New York is not at all exceptional. 

The more advanced states are beginning to provide for 
an enumeration of children of school age in order to supply 
information as to who should be in school, and also for 
special officers whose duty it is to see that all are accounted 
for. 

A noticeable difference between the compulsory attend- 
ance laws in America and in the more advanced European 
nations is that with us attendance within specified ages 
is required, while with them the attendance must con- 



66 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tinue until a specified measure of educational proficiency 
is proved to the satisfaction of school officers. 

There is no doubt of effective attendance laws reducing 
illiteracy. The comparisons between the European nations 
themselves, as well as between our states and the European 
nations, are exceedingly interesting; and the comparisons 
of one American state with another are no less so. In Italy 
with no law in force, the percentage of illiterates above 
twenty years of age is fifty-two, while in France with an 
effective law, it is less than five. In Russia with no law, 
it is sixty-one per cent, while in Holland with a good law, 
it is two per cent, and in Sweden and Denmark it is less 
than one per cent. In Spain it is sixty-eight per cent with 
no law, and in England with a stringent law, the percen- 
tage of illiteracy almost disappears. 

Of course, other factors than compulsory attendance 
upon school enter in some degree into the measure of illit- 
eracy in a state, but there can be no doubt about systematic 
and enforced school requirements being the overwhelming 
factor. The following figures taken from the United States 
census of 1900 are conclusive : — 

Percentage of illiterate voters in states having compul- 
sory attendance laws : — 



California 


6.2 


Nevada 


12.8 


Colorado 


4.1 


New Hampshire 


7.9 


Connecticut 


6.8 


New Jersey 


6.9 


Idaho 


5.4 


New York 


5.9 


Illinois 


4.8 


North Dakota 


5.4 


Indiana 


5.6 


Ohio 


4.8 


Iowa 


2.7 


Oregon 


4.8 


Kansas 


3.4 


Pennsylvania 


7.7 


Kentucky 


18.8 


Rhode Island 


9.2 


Maine 


6.4 


South Dakota 


5.0 


Massachusetts 


6.4 


Utah 


3.7 


Michigan 


5.5 


Vermont 


7.9 


Minnesota 


4.1 


Washington 


3.4 


Missouri 


7.0 


"West Virginia 


12.9 


Montana 


6.1 


Wisconsin 


5.5 


Nebraska 


2.5 


Wyoming 


4.3 



33.7 


Mississippi 


33.8 


20.0 


North Carolina 


29.4 


14.0 


South Carolina 


35.1 


22.1 


Tennessee 


21.7 


31.6 


Texas 


15.4 


37.6 


Virginia 


25.3 


12.5 







ILLITERACY 67 

Percentage of illiterate voters in states without compul- 
sory attendance laws : — 

Alabama 

Arkansas 

Delaware 

Florida 

Georgia 

Louisiana 

Maryland 

The proportion of illiterates is smaller than it used to be. 
In 1870 there were 200 illiterates to each 1000 of popula- 
tion ; in 1880 there were 170 ; in 1890 there were 133 ; in 
1900 there were 107. 

The states of Kentucky, Nevada, and West Virginia 
in the first table above may seem exceptional. They are 
really not so, for their compulsory laws are new or not 
enforced. The chief educational officer of Kentucky has 
officially said : " In the rural districts the law is almost 
a nullity." Similarly it has been said of Nevada: "The 
law has never been enforced. It is sometimes used to scare 
foreigners. As it now stands it is a dead letter. We cannot 
force the legislature to amend it." Of West Virginia it 
has also been said : " The law is new and not yet fully 
developed." The evidence seems conclusive that the sen- 
timent of a state determines the percentage of illiteracy, 
and the best proof as well as the necessary instrument 
of a healthful public sentiment is a compulsory attendance 
law which compels. There will, of course, be special 
circumstances, like the presence of large cities, or of a large 
body of recent immigrants, or of particularly hard economic 
conditions, but ordinarily it may be said with entire confi- 
dence that a low rate of illiteracy and effective compul- 
sory attendance upon the schools will be found to be 
companions in the same state. 

Much has already been done in Europe to assure the 



68 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

attendance of defective children; that is, the deaf, dumb, 
and blind, while practically nothing has been done in that 
direction in America. Much provision has been made for 
them in the more advanced states, but their attendance 
has not been made obligatory to any extent. 

If we expect to find a larger percentage of illiteracy in 
the cities than in the country, we must be disappointed. 
The percentage of illiteracy in New York city, and in our 
other large cities, is less than in many rural counties, and 
is not greater than in the average rural county. The per- 
centage of ilHterates who are American born is much 
larger in the country than in the cities. Indeed, there are 
few if any rural counties which show so small a percentage 
of native illiterates as the largest cities show. The city and 
county of New York has a smaller percentage of ilHter- 
ates who are the children of foreign born parents than any 
other county in the state of New York. 

This may indicate how much more convenient the 
schools are in the city than in the country, and how much 
better the school attendance and child labor laws are 
enforced in the cities than in the country ; but it also indi- 
cates that immigrant parents in the cities voluntarily send 
their children to school more regularly than do native born 
parents living in the country. 

The facts clearly show that illiteracy is less prevalent 
in cities of more than 25,000 inhabitants than in smaller 
cities. They show that illiteracy is more common above 
twenty-five years of age than between ten and twenty-five. 
Illiteracy among children is rapidly decreasing in all sec- 
tions of the country. 

There is more illiteracy among women than men, but 
the difference is growing less, and it seems probable that 
before long there will be more among men than women. 

Our American states are spending much more money for 



ILLITERACY 69 

popular education than is spent by the same number of 
people in any other country in the world. Why do we have 
so many unlettered people above ten years of age, and par- 
ticularly why do we have so many more than in England, 
Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, Norway, or Germany? 

The answer to this question is not very difficult. There 
are at least three reasons for it : — 

First. We are now receiving vast numbers of immi- 
grants from countries where illiteracy is very prevalent. 
It has not always been so. We formerly got most of our 
immigrants from the more intelligent countries of the Old 
World. Now we are getting most from the less favored 
nations. Although there is no reason for fear that their 
children cannot be educated and assimilated, both parents 
and children do add much to our percentage of illiteracy. 
But we get many immigrants from countries having less 
illiteracy than we have. One class somewhat offsets the 
other. It is hard to know what to do with illiterates who 
want to come to America from other lands. It is difficult, 
perhaps wrong, to deny them the privilege of coming, but 
clearly the matter requires much attention. 

Second. We undertake more in our schools than other 
nations do in theirs, but the leading nations of Europe 
do what they undertake much more generally and com- 
pletely than we do. In other words, in Europe there are 
classes and much caste. The people who have made and 
who execute the laws have not reasoned that every child 
ought to have a chance to get a liberal education, but they 
have reasoned that for the good of the nation every child 
must be required to go to school regularly between about 
six and fourteen years of age, that he may be sure of an 
elementary education. 

Third. School attendance laws are enforced more sys- 
tematically and completely in many other countries than 



70 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

in America. Unhappily, the common sentiment of America 
does not sustain the enforcement of laws requiring the 
attendance of children at school, as the common sentiment 
of many other countries does. We have much more free- 
dom in this country than many other countries have, but 
we have more false ideas about freedom than many of 
them have. There is the pinch. 

Much depends upon the importance which in the popu- 
lar mind attaches to the matter of sending children to 
school, and that in turn depends very largely upon what 
the government does. 

It cannot be assumed that all parents wish or are even 
willing that their children shall go to school. There are 
parents who are idle and criminal and are without any in- 
terest in the well-being of their children and in the welfare 
of the state. There are parents who are neither idle nor vi- 
cious, but who are so lacking in outlook that they will keep 
their children at work without cause, when they should be 
in school. And there are still other parents whose necessi- 
ties are real and overcome any interest they may have in 
the schooling of their children. Of course there are many 
children who are without parental care and interest. 

In all such cases it is the imperative function of the state 
to intervene and not only see that the child has the training 
which his living in this country gives him as his natural 
right, but also that he is saved from being a load upon 
other people, and is prepared to carry his share of the 
burdens of the state and contribute his share to the pros- 
perity and greatness of the state. 

Experience has shown conclusively enough the steps 
by which alone this may be accomplished. Speaking gen- 
erally they may be enumerated as follows: — 

1. There must be a registration of all children and of 
their ages. 



ILLITERACY 71 

2. All within fixed ages must be in school or accounted 
for. 

3. They must be in school at all times when the schools 
are in session. 

4. Absence of children within the attendance limits of 
age must be for none but imperative reasons satisfactory 
to the attendance officers, such as sickness or physical, 
disability, or they must be able to satisfy school officers 
that they are proficient in the work which children within 
the attendance age may be expected to acquire. Doubtless 
it would be even better if the only excuse for absence, aside 
from physical inability, should be proficiency in work 
rather than the attainment of an age limit. 

5. Parents or legal guardians must be held responsible 
for attendance, and neglect must be punished by fine at 
first and then by imprisonment sufficient to emphasize the 
seriousness of the offense. 

6. Special officers must be charged with the execution 
of attendance laws. They must operate upon a well or- 
dered system. They must be sufficiently compensated to 
enable them to be respected and must be vested with 
powers which will cause them to be regarded. They must 
account for all children within the prescribed ages. They 
must be authorized to enter shops and factories where 
children are employed and apprehend employers who vio- 
late the school and labor laws. They must cooperate with 
teachers to reduce truancy to a minimum, and they must 
initiate proceedings to punish parents or guardians who are 
delinquent. 

7. Attendance laws must apply evenly to all parts of 
the state, country as well as city. 

8. Attendance officers must be subject to the direction 
and discipline of the general officers of the school system. 

The uniform habit of having all children in school is 



7^ AMERICAN EDUCATION 

somewhat inherent and also somewhat dependent upon eco- 
nomic conditions. It is acquirable where it is not common. 
It will be acquired and become fixed under the steady and 
persistent demands of the state. It is imperative to the 
security of government, and the strength of it will measure 
the true greatness of a people. Illiteracy may be steadily 
and surely reduced by systematic policy, and the state 
which has the most heterogeneous or indifferent popula- 
tion, and which goes furthest in reducing illiteracy, should 
have the place of highest honor and respect in the American 
republic. 

Compulsory attendance upon American schools is as 
yet in its earliest stages, but a good start has been made, 
public sentiment is ripening, and the movement must ad- 
vance until it covers the land with very considerable uni- 
formity and is enforced with very general effectiveness. 

Surely the people of the United States are not willing 
to admit that we are permanently to have more ignorant 
men and women in this country than they have in other 
civilized countries. 

Perhaps there is a factor in this problem that springs 
out of English and particularly out of American history, 
and lies deep down in the nation's caution and self -con- 
sciousness. Americans are fundamentally opposed to any 
unnecessary meddling with their affairs by the government. 
They have always had great confidence in a resourceful- 
ness which seems able to meet any actual peril when the 
time comes. They attach the greatest importance to the 
free chance for every one. 

It now appears as if it is quite as important to look after 
the rights of those who cannot look after their own rights 
to an elementary education as to hold out to the few the 
opportunities for an advanced education. If it is no more 
important, it is as important. And it will be a crowning 



ILLITERACY 73 

glory to our republican system if the nation will put away 
its youthful vanity, submit with cheerfulness to the regu- 
lations which really enlarge liberty, deepen the common 
respect for the law by enforcing it, meet difficulties in 
practical ways, and make certain that all of its children 
have the elements and instruments of knowledge as well as 
that the stronger ones have the chance to scale the moun- 
tain peaks of learning. 

Summed up, we offer more schooling to all children 
than most other peoples do, but we are less forceful in 
requiring all children to be able to read and write than the 
better educated peoples are. We lay greater stress upon 
the rights of the child to all grades of learning than most 
other nations, but we do less to make certain that he learns 
to read and write than many nations do. We have ordi- 
narily based our educational policies upon the need of pro- 
tecting the suffrage and the safety of the Republic. There 
is little real danger. We can rise to almost any exigency. 
But ought we to invite exigencies ? And above all, ought 
we not to assure every child the elements of knowledge and 
the implements of decent living, no matter what sort of 
parents he may have ? Is not that one of the very highest 
ends of democratic as much as of monarchial government ? 



VI 



THE CRUCIAL TEST OF THE PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS 

Our public school system is in recent years being put to 
its crucial test in our large cities. The question is up 
whether the schools shall cease to represent all the people 
of the great cities ; and the security of the public educational 
system of the country rests upon the determination of that 
question. The statement may seem unwarrantably strong. 
For the sake of clearness it may be well to look at the 
question directly from the point of view of the citizen. 
There is a public school within reach of every home in a 
given city. All residents, with or without children, have 
to support it. It is wholly managed by public authority. 
Education is compulsory. Having children, you must send 
them to this school regardless of its defects, or you must 
pay twice by sending them to a private one which you think 
competent to teach them, if such can be found. This 
school is to be tested by trial. Your children commence 
attendance. In a little time you find that attendance cannot 
be regular and long-continued without the impairment of 
health. Investigation shows that there is reason enough for 
this. There is not enough breathing space and sunlight. 
There is too close contact with other children, who are un- 
clean. The hygienic conditions are bad. It is a struggle 
between the life of your child and unhealthful surround- 
ings. You are a fool, or worse, if you do not bear a hand in 
that struggle and take care of the most precious possession 
the Almighty has permitted to come into your keeping. 
Or, you may find that the teacher is unworthy of com- 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 75 

panionship with a well-bred child, and incapable of teach- 
ing him. The child may know many things which it is 
very important to know, better than the teacher knows 
them. The child may shrink from association with the 
teacher for reasons which one may readily see; or, the 
teacher may be a good enough person, and ordinarily is, 
and yet may not know how to teach. You have learned 
something of what teaching is. You know that before 
a child can be taught he must come into agreeable and 
self-respecting relations with the teacher, and you see that 
this is impossible. You know, also, that before the school 
can be of any permanent advantage to the child, there 
must be originality, elasticity, and freedom on the part of 
the teacher, and you see that these are either not present, 
or not apparent. 

The situation preys upon your mind. Your child is 
involved. Its physical and mental health is at stake. 
You seek redress. Going to the teacher, you see that she 
is not disposed, or is not allowed, to hold much converse 
with you. She refers you to the principal. He means 
rightly, but does not view things through your end of the 
telescope. He resents your imputations, or is powerless to 
give you relief. You go to the superintendent. At times 
he can help you, and if he can he will ; but again, he would 
have to walk right into the jaws of official death to redress 
your wrongs. He has met many another on a similar er- 
rand. He sympathizes with you. He will treat you with 
civility, with patience, and with diplomacy. You may rely 
upon it that he will refrain from telling you all he knows. 
Your troubles grow and your exasperation waxes yet 
stronger. You go to the members of the board of educa- 
tion, only to find that they doubt your allegations, shuffle 
out of the responsibility, and are unable or unwilling to 
afford relief. 



76 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

By this time you have realized that there are some 
serious difficulties encompassing the public school system, 
and that the officers of the schools are further from the 
citizen's reach than you had supposed. It is much more 
of a matter than you had imagined to secure public in- 
struction for your child under conditions which will pro- 
mote his physical, mental, and moral health. You may 
be able to pay twice for his schooling, but you are not able 
to submit serenely to an imposition inflicted in the name 
of all that is good by a government which you have always 
supposed you had a part in directing and which you be- 
lieved rested upon a basis of justice to all. This will lead 
you to think a little more deeply. You must have some 
rights in this matter. Not only taxation and representation 
go together ; taxation and rights go together. And what is 
the right of the citizen in the public schools ? It certainly 
is not the mere privilege of paying for their support, or of 
voting for persons who select other persons who appoint 
still other persons to manage the business and teach the 
schools. The sum of the citizen's right in the schools is to 
have the business managed prudently and wisely, and the 
children taught sensibly and scientifically. And when this 
right is violated and there are no adequate and ready 
means of redress, the system is in danger of breaking, and 
it ought to break. 

The officers and teachers of the schools will say and 
think that such troubles are not common, but citizens of 
intelligence who give these matters attention, and parents 
who see the results of the schools in the lives of their chil- 
dren, will say that they are common. The point of vision 
necessarily has much to do with the outlook. It would be 
better if the points of vision could be exchanged now and 
then. The troubles indicated are not rare in large cities. 
They are so common that they have already exerted a 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 77 

powerful influence to drive the well-to-do people out of 
relations with the common schools. And by the well-to-do 
is not meant the independently rich, but the great, self- 
respecting, comfortable class, who earn their living and 
pay their debts, who have made homes which are both 
dependent and independent, and who give substance and 
balance to the social and governmental organization. If 
the time comes when the common schools are sustained 
only or mainly to keep the slums from destroying us, then 
the character of the schools and the chief glory of the 
American plan of government and of education will be 
gone; for that plan contemplates the intellectual and 
moral advancement of the whole mass quite as much as 
individual and physical security. If we permit the schools 
to become the schools of the poor alone, we permit what 
we have struggled heroically to prevent since the beginning 
of the government, — what in each generation we have 
succeeded in preventing through radical changes in our 
plans and theories. It would be un-American to believe 
that we shall not succeed again; but mere assurance of 
success does not remove the danger. The causes for the 
present educational conditions in many of our great cities 
may be briefly stated : — 

1. The conditions of life become more diversified and 
more intense in the great cities, and it is therefore more 
diflScult to hold the children in common association. 

2. The demands upon a teaching force, by reason of the 
large schools, the widely different circumstances of the 
children, the many branches taught, and the better know- 
ledge of many parents as to what constitutes good teach- 
ing, are much greater than in smaller places ; while the diffi- 
culties in the way of securing a teaching force of adequate 
teaching power and reasonable social standing are also, 
unfortunately, greater. 



78 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

3. The multiplication of numbers in the teaching force, 
and particularly the extent to which inexperienced and un- 
prepared persons are received into it, and the practical 
impossibility of getting rid of inefficient teachers, make it 
necessary to impose severe limitations upon the freedom 
of the whole force in order to prevent the poorer ones from 
doing harm. This stifles individuality, which is the essence 
of good teaching. 

4. The amount of money paid to support the schools of 
a great city sharpens the cupidity of the non-productive 
sponges and cormorants of society. There is greater oppor- 
tunity and keener appetite for plunder. The spirit of misrule 
common in the municipal government in our large cities 
springs from social and political conditions. The people 
are a little more generous and alert about the manage- 
ment of the schools than about the business affairs of 
their city housekeeping, but the same general conditions 
affect the schools. 

5. The plan of organization and the system of adminis- 
tration have become altogether inadequate for interests of 
so great magnitude. The business has outgrown the organi- 
zation for managing it. In primitive times affairs may be 
managed without much regard to fundamental principles, 
because every one has knowledge of what is going on, and 
mistakes can be quickly seen and corrected ; but it is not so 
in great enterprises. In our great city school systems there 
is little distinction between legislative and executive func- 
tions, no centralization of responsibility and accountability. 
Novices are toying with high powers of government and 
managing vast properties, before which the most experi- 
enced and conservative stand in awe. There is but little 
appreciation of the difficulties of developing a competent, 
right-spirited, self-respecting teaching force, and the temple 
is often profaned by money changers. The organization 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 79 

is so constituted that it resists the contributing citizen 
looking for live teaching for his children, more than the 
poor unfortunate who is in quest of a place, or the politician 
who is looking for plunder. 

Of course many of these troubles arise at once out of 
the money question. A given city may be expending 
millions of dollars each year upon its schools. The wise 
and safe expenditure of this money, so that it shall se- 
cure the ends which the people who give it have the 
right to demand, places a tremendous responsibility 
somewhere. The business operations incident thereto 
are involved and innumerable. Integrity, expertness, ex- 
perience, and alertness are all imperative, or the money 
is filched, and the ends for which it was raised are de- 
feated. The city owns millions upon millions of real es- 
tate devoted to school purposes. It is putting in millions 
more each year. It is difficult for some men to care for a 
small interest in real estate where their own self-interest 
is sufficient to make them attend to it. How infinitely 
more involved is the problem of maintaining in good 
physical and healthful condition hundreds of buildings 
subject to the hard usage which falls upon schoolhouses ! 
Then, there is the matter of selecting new sites and 
erecting new buildings. The first calls for ripe judgment 
as to the probable directions of the city's growth ; the last 
calls for alertness, disinterested public service, and per- 
sonal sacrifice on the part of good men to prevent fraud 
and secure to the people what belongs to them. The 
whole business is encompassed by self-seekers. 

If it is difficult to manage the business of the schools, 
it is infinitely more so to secure life-giving instruction. 
It is strange that we need to remind ourselves now and 
then that the end for which the schools exist is not to gratify 
contractors or provide places, but to supply instruction. If 



80 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

anything has stood in the way of the fullest development 
of the schools, it has been apparent readiness to accept 
everything that passed under the name of instruction ; and 
the most gratifying sign in the educational heavens is the 
closer discrimination with which the people are beginning 
to look upon what is done in the schools. And when the 
people begin to determine the differing values of instruc- 
tion they come to the great question of the organization 
and supervision of the teaching force. 

There are more persons who want to teach school than 
there are schools to be taught. All the world sympathizes 
with the young people who are trying to be respectable 
and are looking for honorable employment. All the 
well-disposed will help such persons to places when they 
can, without much reference to adaptation to position. 
They think, and not strangely, that the other people must 
look out for that. This is markedly so if the young person 
is a woman. 

One course or the other must be taken in regard to the 
teaching service of the public schools. Indifference on the 
part of the people will readily encourage church politicians, 
club politicians, school politicians, or politicians who are 
not described by a qualifying adjective, neighbors, friends, 
or relatives, to push people with no aptitude and little 
preparation into teachers' positions. Culture and social 
standing may be overlooked ; intellectual nourishment and 
inspiration may not be afforded the teaching force; a life 
tenure may be promised to all who get in, regardless of 
qualification or spirit ; and the teachers may be left without 
control to combine for selfish ends and defy the best sen- 
timent of the people whose most precious interest they 
are ostensibly chosen to promote. The result of such a 
course is perfectly clear. With the passing years there 
will be no growth in scholarship, or general culture, or 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 81 

force of character, or disciplinary power, or teaching abil- 
ity. Without such growth there can be, of course, no 
public school progress. Iron-clad rules will be imposed to 
keep up a show of authority and prevent marked excesses, 
but the schools will have little vitality a,nd less respect, 
the teaching will be perfunctory and artificial, and matters 
may be expected to grow worse and worse, with no hope of 
better conditions. 

On the other hand, admission to the service may be 
guarded, the common thought may be directed and in- 
spired, compensation may be determined upon expertness 
of service, and promotion upon the basis of merit, the in- 
efficient and undeserving may be expelled, and the whole 
vast enterprise enveloped in a professional atmosphere, 
and energized with pedagogical life. Then rules may be 
relaxed and originality encouraged without danger. Then 
it may be expected that the spirit of the force will improve ; 
that the teachers will stand higher in the sentiment of 
the city ; that there will be kindness in the management and 
life in the instruction ; that the children will be fascinated, 
and that their minds and souls will thrill with new life, 
which will be felt in the homes and give substantial and 
enduring support to the better life of the city. 

There is no problem of larger proportions than that of 
supervising and leading a teaching force numbering thou- 
sands of persons. The object is not to secure some good 
teaching, for that could hardly be avoided. It is to prevent 
all bad teaching. This depends upon the individuality of 
each teacher and the harmony and enthusiasm of the whole 
body. The superintendent's office must know the qualities 
of every teacher in the system. High school diplomas, 
college diplomas, normal diplomas, give but inadequate 
assurance of good teaching. Adaptation is all-important; 
the spirit is vital. The superintendent's office must not 



82 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

only inspect, it must lead. It must be considerate and 
sympathetic, helpful and inspiring. It must have authority 
and it must act justly. Appointments, and promotions, and 
dismissals must be made with a clear head, a kind heart, 
and a strong hand, without fear or favor, but with a deter- 
mination to prevent all bad teaching and lift the whole 
force to the highest plane possible. It is truly surprising 
how the common sentiment of a teaching force fixes the 
status of each of its own members, and how surely that 
sentiment knows whether the acts of officials spring from 
merit or from influence. In one case the force will be with- 
out energy, self-confidence, steadiness, or public respect. 
In the other case it will be characterized by fraternal re- 
spect and mutual regard, and it will show power and ver- 
satility, which will uplift the life and shape the character 
of the city. 

All this cannot be brought about in a day. It cannot be 
effected without a radical change in plan and organization. 
The whole plan must be rearranged so that the citizen 
who finds a child in an unwholesome school-room, or under 
a clumsy or dyspeptic teacher, can go down town and 
find the man who is responsible for it, and who can cure 
the trouble in a day. It must be so readjusted that officials 
shall be required to do things which they may be supposed 
to be capable of doing, and kept from meddling with mat- 
ters about which they know little and cannot learn much 
for years. The system must be so organized that officials 
of whom great things are expected will have opportunity 
and encouragement to do good work, and will be able to 
see the results of capable and conscientious work and get 
some substantial reward therefor in the esteem of the 
people about them. 

There is no good reason why our large cities should not 
save money in school expenses and at the same time see 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 83 

the physical condition of their property improve, the finan- 
cial statement look healthier, and the teaching advance in 
quality and tone, if they make a school organization in 
accord with the principles which the world's experiences 
have shown to be imperative to the conduct of all good 
enterprises and then enforce the rights of the people who 
are interested in those enterprises. 

To realize such a result in any large city very specific 
steps should be taken. First, the school board should be 
a legislative body only and have no executive functions. 
It should not be so large in numbers as to become a public 
debating school. It should be representative of the whole 
city, and by no committee assignments or other official 
action should members become interested in, or represen- 
tative of, one section more than another. It should legislate 
upon the policy and general development of the school 
system, and it should control, in a general way, the expen- 
ditures, so far as to make provision for the buildings and 
their care, and for a needed number of teachers and their 
suitable compensation. All of its acts should be expressed 
by resolutions in its published records. But it should have 
nothing to do with letting contracts or making appoint- 
ments, at least beyond seeing that expenditures are within 
appropriations, and beyond naming its own clerk and the 
best available men for heads of the two great executive 
departments in which all details of administration should 
be separated ; one to manage the business affairs and the 
other the instruction. The terms of the heads of these 
departments should be long and perhaps indefinite, and 
their powers should be wholly independent and fully pre- 
scribed by statute. 

The business department should have charge of all the 
property interests of the system. It should make the 
contracts and see to their execution, appoint janitors 



84 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and remove them, and be held responsible for the condi- 
tion of the property. The head of this department should 
be a business man of good experience and well-known 
independence and probity, who is strongly sympathetic 
with the noble ends for which the public schools stand. 

The department of instruction should be headed by 
a superintendent who is an expert in pedagogical science 
and in administration. He should have absolute power 
of appointment, assignment to position and removal of 
teachers, and suflficient assistance to have full and constant 
knowledge of what is being done in every school-room in 
the city. Whether the law provides for it or not, the super- 
intendent and his assistants are likely to act as a board. 
This board will not be a body dangerous to the liberties 
of a free people. There will not be one chance of their 
doing injustice to a teacher, to a hundred chances that they 
will leave undone disagreeable things which should be 
done in the interests of better teaching. The superintend- 
ent and his advisers should be placed in dignified posi- 
tions. They should be men and women with a teacher's 
kindly nature and spirit, who are capable of upholding 
the dignity of their profession, and they should be as secure 
in their positions as are the members of the supreme court 
of the state. 

The affairs of the school should be wholly separated from 
municipal business, and the school organization should 
have no connection whatever with municipal politics. 
There is no ground for any connection between the two. 
The public school system rests upon the taxing power of 
the state, and that is wholly within the control of the law- 
making power. The school system is a state system ad- 
ministered in the American fashion through representatives 
chosen by the people in their local assemblages, or in any 
other way the state may direct. But these officers do not 



TEST OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS 85 

cease to be representatives of a state system, as was pointed 
out in the discussion of the legal basis of the schools, and 
there is every reason why their tenure and their powers 
should be wholly independent of municipal boards and 
officers. 

How the school board shall be chosen is a vital ques- 
tion in education. If such a plan of organization as has 
been outlined is adopted, the question loses some of its 
significance, however. Troubles in school administration 
seldom come from the presence of vicious characters on 
school boards ; they arise from a confusion of powers and 
prerogatives, and from a disposition which men seem to 
have, to direct matters the most about which they know 
the least. When powers are based upon principles, the 
troubles will largely disappear. Nevertheless, according to 
the Greek maxim, "No law is a good law unless it has 
good executors." It is for the people of each community 
to ask the legislature to open the way which promises to 
result in the selection of citizens as members of the board 
of education who are representative of the thrift and 
energy, the best thought and the higher life of the city. 

In a word, any city is to take the general course which 
experience leads all intelligent people to take concerning 
the administration of great enterprises, in order to justify 
the theories upon which they are acting, and make sure 
of the ends for which they are striving. All business must 
be done upon a business basis. The administrative organ- 
ization of the city school system must be built on bed-rock 
principles ; needed authority must be conferred upon school 
officials by law ; they must be given positions of character 
and dignity and security, and they must be removed if 
they do not meet all their obligations. There are men and 
women who will not scramble for these positions, but who 
would fill them capably and conscientiously; and they 



86 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

can be found. It is for the substantial sentiment of the 
city to tear down social, religious, political, and all other 
kinds of fences, bring contributing citizens together, lay 
aside everything but the common good, make plans which 
are scientific, and find representatives to carry them out. 
The one great aim of the public school system, as it is 
well to recall, is to hold us together, to secure the safety of 
a wide-open suffrage, and to assure the progress of the 
whole population. Child study, entrance requirements, and 
all the other things which are discussed often in educational 
conventions are only incidental. The law-making power 
is to enable the people to educate themselves. The public 
school system is our protection. In the light of the world's 
experience our experiment in government is a vast under- 
taking. History does not record a similar experiment which 
has been permanently successful. The public school sys- 
tem is the one institution which is more completely repre- 
sentative of the American plan, spirit, and purpose than 
any other. It can continue to be the instrument of our 
security and the star of our hope only so long as it holds 
the interest and confidence of all the people by assuring 
the rights of every one to the best teaching, and by moving 
the mass to higher intellectual and moral planes. 



VII 

UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 

The purpose and organization of the American school 
system has been pointed out ; its relation to the state and 
its legal status have been indicated; and some general 
problems have been discussed. There are certain funda- 
mentals which it may well be said are settled by common 
thinking and by universal acceptance. It is inevitable, 
however, that there will at all times be problems con- 
fronting the American school system. The purpose is here 
to disclose the reality of some of them without sustain- 
ing with arguments one view or the other. 

It is an open question how much initiative and control 
shall be exerted by the state and how much shall be left 
to the locaHty, concerning the schools. Of course, since 
the public school system has come to be supported by 
taxation and the power of taxation cannot be exercised 
except by the sovereign authority of a state, there is no 
question about the state having ample power to do what 
it will about the schools. But there is very serious question 
about the measure of direction which the state ought to 
impose. People learn to do by doing. An officer bearing 
the appointment and exercising the authority of the state 
may know more about educational organization and ad- 
ministration than a local school meeting or local official 
may be expected to know, or, knowing, may be able to do. 
He may do things better than will be done without him. 
Yet, if he initiates and supervises everything, the people 
will come to depend upon him, and will invariably look 
to the state to do what would broaden and strengthen them. 



88 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

if they would do for themselves. On the other hand, people 
need educational advice from the outside. It often hap- 
pens that a community thinks that it has the very best 
schools, when it has almost the worst. The difficulty is 
that it cannot see, and of course it cannot do. How are 
state control and local self-initiative and administration to 
be balanced with the best results t 

Very akin to this question is another, as to the measure 
of money which the state should provide for the support 
of the schools, and the amount which should be left to 
each city, town, or district to supply. In many states the 
support of the schools is left altogether to the locality. 
In others a very considerable sum is distributed annually 
on some basis which requires the stronger sections to aid 
in some measure the weaker ones, and so to equahze educa- 
tional advantages over the state. The city of New York, 
for example, pays annually about a million and a half of 
dollars to aid other sections of the state which are finan- 
cially weaker. Of the legal competency of the legislature 
to exact this there can be no question. Of the substantial 
aid to the rural districts of the state there is no doubt. 
But people are never satisfied with the amount of money 
which they get for nothing. The more they get the more 
they demand, the more they come to depend upon it, and 
the less they will be willing to raise for themselves. It is 
clear that'in education the stronger and wealthier sections 
of a state ought to help the weaker and poorer ones. But, 
in justice to themselves, the weaker ones should not be 
allowed to take all they would. How are the state and the 
local support to be adjusted so as to assure the best schools 
in every section and promote the highest interests of an 
entire commonwealth ? 

Again, if the state is to raise and distribute funds for 
the support of local schools, how is the distribution to be 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 89 

adjusted as between the primary, secondary, and higher 
schools ? There are some precious souls who, if they are 
in favor of anything educationally, think they are for the 
"three R's" exclusively, or, at most, are for anything be- 
yond the "three R's" only when the need of their being 
for it has wholly passed away. Yet a mere abihty to read 
and write and cipher does not now sustain intellectual 
life and democratic institutions anywhere in this country ; 
and, moreover, the excellence of the primary schools is 
dependent upon the prevalence and efficiency of the sec- 
ondary schools. But the secondary schools are more costly 
than the elementary schools, and the higher are ijiore 
expensive than the secondary. How is the state to use its 
power so as to balance the school system, assure an equi- 
table distribution to the different grades, and so secure 
the best results which wisdom can devise ? 

Yet again, how is the teaching force to be made the best 
possible ? There are more who want to teach than there 
are places. The pay is not large, but the work allows 
considerable leisure and satisfies pride. The unprepared 
ones are to be shut out. But who are prepared and who 
are unprepared ? Some who know less of what is found 
in books than others are better teachers than the others. 
Surely, some who are not very successful in passing 
examinations are acceptable teachers. Some definite 
scholastic attainments are necessary, according to grade. 
Some general culture is imperative, regardless of grade. 
Some professional training in educational theory and in 
teaching methods is requisite. Then there is the matter 
of spirit, and finally of adaptability. But this refers to 
the individual teacher. How is the morale of the whole 
force to be uplifted ? It cannot be done through indiffer- 
ence and inattention. It will not move forward of its own 
motion. It cannot be done through political officers who 



90 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

know less themselves than they are bound to exact of the 
teachers. It cannot be done through examinations alone, 
and it cannot be done without examinations. It cannot 
be done with a rush, and it cannot be done through harsh- 
ness to worthy and deserving teachers. It is a matter of 
sound plan, steadily followed for a long time. How is the 
plan to be determined upon, and by what method is it 
to be carried to a meritorious conclusion ? 

Then there is always the unsettled question of competent 
supervision. The office of school superintendent is an 
American creation. In other constitutional countries the 
schopls do not attempt as much as ours do; the teachers 
are men with life tenure who follow the instructions of the 
government minister of education in all things; the work 
is routine; the habit of attendance by young children in 
primary schools is universal ; there is no mixing of classes 
and no articulation of schools, and the results, as has been 
observed, place the percentage of illiteracy lower than in 
this country. With us the curriculum is long and diversified ; 
all classes of children are instructed in the same schools ; 
our teaching force is changeable, not so professional in 
character and often overtaxed. In a measure difficulties 
have been overcome by general supervision. But the really 
professional superintendent is largely without legal author- 
ity, and the political superintendent, who often survives in 
the rural districts, is frequently without professional effi- 
ciency. Generally speaking, wherever there is a profes- 
sional superintendent he is subject to an unprofessional 
board which is not without self-confidence in all that con- 
cerns the schools. In a word, we have to contend with the 
disadvantages of democratic government, and that fact 
sometimes obscures the other fact, particularly to teachers, 
that there are more advantages than disadvantages in 
government by the people. 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 91 

The legal and authoritative prerogatives of school super- 
intendents, both in city and country, are unsettled matters 
in American education. Under the prevailing conditions, 
and conditions which are inherent and not quickly to be 
changed, supervision is highly important. It is not too 
much to say that the value of the instruction is very de- 
pendent upon its professional qualities and thoroughness. 
Aptness in supervisory leadership is not wholly dependent 
upon the same qualities which make for effectiveness in 
teaching. Then how are we to get adequate training and 
experience in a sufficient number of men and women to 
supply the needs ? And how are we to treat superintendents, 
concerning functions, responsibilities, and compensation, 
so as to secure and retain, in supervisory positions, true 
manliness and real womanliness, enriched by the qualities 
which vitalize professional leadership, and without mere 
pretense and form.? 

To be a little more specific, what are to be the standard 
attainments of superintendents ? How much are they to 
have to do with appointing or removing teachers, with 
framing courses of instruction, with adopting textbooks, 
with determining disputes, with regulating the progress 
of pupils, and with developing the morale, and spirit, and 
power of the schools? How are they to be saved from 
humiliation by directors and trustees who have legal 
prerogatives but no knowledge of the delicate and per- 
plexing matters involved in the administration upon 
modern lines of mixed and ambitious schools? How is 
there to be any supervision worthy of the name in the 
country districts ? With the new means of transportation 
and communication, is it not pretty nearly time to elimi- 
nate the " rural school problem" altogether, to take a more 
advanced position concerning the professional standing 
of the rural superintendent or commissioner, and to make 



92 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

supervisory districts in the farming sections of a size which 
will permit real superintendence and enable all the teachers 
to come in once a month and sit around a table for dis- 
cussion and for instruction ? Surely, these are unsettled 
questions which will have to be worked out slowly in the 
further evolution of our public school system. 

The size of the school district in the farming regions 
has been much in discussion for several years. From the 
settlement of the country, the school district outside of 
the towns has been small enough to place a schoolhouse 
within walking distance of every home. To be sure, the 
walk has often been a long one, but the whole world is 
relative, and it has not seemed so long to those who had to 
make it as to the less hardy people in the cities. As fast 
as the country was settled, or the distance became imprac- 
ticable by reason of new homes, another district was created 
and a new schoolhouse built. Now there is something 
of a movement to make larger districts by consolidating 
districts, carrying the children to and from school when 
necessary, in order to have larger schools, more elaborate 
buildings, and graded courses of instruction. This move- 
ment has not, by any means, gone so far as to become a 
policy. Many arguments have been adduced in its favor. 
The ones opposed have not been much presented. They 
cannot be fully brought forward here. But such questions 
as the following are surely not impertinent in this con- 
nection : — 

Are we altogether certain that a large school is better 
than a small one, or a graded than an ungraded one ? Is 
not the essential difference in the teaching and in the 
supervision, and may not efficient instruction be assured 
in the small country district by a course less open to ob- 
jection ? 

Is it, considering the exigencies of carriage and of 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 93 

weather, well to require young children to go farther 
from home than is imperative? 

Is it better to centralize and complicate administrative 
machinery, with the necessary delegation of the authority 
for maintaining the schools from the people in primary 
assemblages to their representatives and officials, or to keep 
control as close to the people as possible and in the simplest 
forms compatible with efficiency? May not the district 
school be expected to meet the circumstances and the 
elementary needs of its immediate constituency very well 
indeed, and is not the matter of maintaining the school- 
house and of providing for the modest expenses of the 
schools likely to keep the people more interested in the 
schools than they will naturally be if the school is more 
remote and the measure of their control is lessened ? Can- 
not any real difficulty be met by continuing elementary 
schools as heretofore, and by supplementing them by 
central high schools ? Is it not better to continue the unit 
of district school administration as it prevails over large 
areas of the country, as far at least as local control over 
the location and the character of the building and pro- 
vision for expenses are concerned, and by making a 
different unit for supervisory purposes which may be large 
enough to get a strong superintendent and yet not so large 
in miles as to make real supervision impracticable ? Is not 
the real difficulty in the country, politics and the size of 
the supervisory district and lack of professional control 
over the teacher and the teaching, rather than the size 
of the school district ? Is the location of an elementary 
school within the smallest practicable distance from every 
home, and the possession of a popular meeting place by 
the smallest hamlets and the crossroads, to be sur- 
rendered without the most imperative necessity, or until 
it is clearly proved that the change of plan does not 



94 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

involve greater difficulties than any which are now en- 
countered ? 

There is at all. times a sufficient supply of unsettled 
questions concerning the development of a uniformly 
efficient teaching service, both in city and country. It must 
be said that teaching does not attract the larger number 
of forceful characters. The compensation is insufficient 
and the opportunities for distinction are held to be lacking. 
Men have very generally ceased to prepare themselves 
for teaching, and the same is largely true of the more am- 
bitious women. No one can question that the best interests 
of the teaching service claim as much of the masculine 
as of the feminine mind, beyond the primary schools 
at least. No one can doubt the need of the most aspiring 
women in the schools. Any great work among large num- 
bers of both sexes requires the cooperative help of both 
men and women and of the strongest and most ambitious 
men and women in the world. The ordinary conditions 
of the teaching service do not make for this. And there has 
been in recent years a remarkable educational develop- 
ment which, indirectly but strongly, opposes it. That is 
the expansion of the colleges and universities so as to 
prepare for all of the professions, and the multiplying of 
vocations for educated and aggressive men and women. 
Moreover, the colleges, perhaps unintentionally, prepare 
for every other vocation better than for teaching, and their 
indirect influence is against teaching. University teachers 
are not very familiar with modern work in the lower 
schools, and the interests of their own special branches 
displace any serious concern for a unified organization or 
an all around service in the schools below. They are not 
only more interested in the pupils who are going to college 
than in those who are not, but also more in the pupils who 
are headed for their departments than in those who are 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 95 

likely to elect other branches for future study. All this is 
turning nearly all the men and many of the best women, 
who in other times would have looked to teaching as a 
vocation, to other work, and it is lessening the independ- 
ence and effectiveness of the teaching force to a degree 
which is hardly compensated for by the larger knowledge 
of educational principles and the improved methods of 
the modern agencies for training teachers. The live ques- 
tion is, how are we to assure a teaching force which shall 
be free from specially defective factors and generally as 
capable and spirited and aggressive as that which manages 
the other great, though less important, intellectual activ- 
ities of the nation ^ Always a pressing question, the 
growing importance and the growing difficulties of the 
subject make it more weighty now than at any previous 
time. 

However important the form of the legal school organiza- 
tion, and however imperative the character of the men and 
women who teach the schools, there is nothing about the 
schools so vital and, it may also be said, so difficult, as a 
sound determination of what work the schools shall do. 

The minister of education in other countries does not 
have a very hard time deciding what the primary schools 
shall do and how it shall be done. He does it alone. He 
follows either the law or long and almost fixed usage. 
The teachers are men, and the tenure of position is for life. 
Every teacher obeys the minister's directions without ques- 
tion. He has to provide a simple curriculum for children 
of the peasant class who expect to live exactly as their 
fathers have lived. The work is not to inspire children to 
do their best and rise to high places among their fellows ; 
it is not to fit them for the work of advanced schools ; it 
is to drill them simply to read and write and work, with- 
out much thought of intellectual development. It satisfies 



96 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the demands of the rather slow-going and monotonous 
life of the people whom these foreign schools serve. 

It is wholly different in America. Our schools are not 
shaped and managed by a nainister, a cabinet, or a monarch, 
but by the people. The common thought and general 
usage have settled the outlines of the system. Each com- 
munity fills in the details and carries them as far as it will. 
Everybody has a proprietary interest in the schools. The 
administration is through popular elections, and changes 
in administration are frequent. Changes in the teaching 
force are frequent, also. There is not much resistive power. 
Every one with a project thinks the schools ought to carry 
it out. It is not so hard for one with a scheme to load it 
upon the schools as it is for an administrative ofiicer or a 
teacher to keep it out. People who mean well, but who are 
without any grasp of the general problem, often turn the 
course of the schools aside from its ordinary and natural 
channel. 

From the standpoint of school administration, every 
American child is bred in the purple. He is to have every- 
thing that the richest child in the world can have in the 
way of instruction if he will take it, and all of the fixed 
influences, direct and indirect, censure him if he neglects 
to take it. Every boy must infer from all he hears that he 
will be discredited unless he follows an exclusively intellec- 
tual pursuit, and every girl must beUeve that her happiness 
depends upon her becoming literary and knowing about 
art and the opera, and wearing silks and directing servants, 
— when the silks are often elusive and always illusory and 
the servants are more elusive and illusory still. 

The American school system is pretty well articulated 
from the kindergarten to the university. Teachers and 
children are continually enjoined to be thinking of the 
next school above. A teacher whose pupils do not pass 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 97 

is discredited. A child who does not yass is in peril of 
being eternally lost. This may not be really so dreadful 
to the individual teacher and the individual child, though 
each thinks it is. It may be as well to have some pressure 
as to have everything fall down and everybody become 
lackadaisical for the want of attention. But does it not 
inevitably attach more significance to the upper than to 
the middle schools ? Does it not assume that the road to 
college and the road to glory are the same ? 

And are they ? No thinking man can doubt the self- 
satisfaction and enlarged intellectual enjoyment which 
commonly result from college training. No one will be 
disposed to deny the advantage which the liberally edu- 
cated and disciplined mind has in severe mental work and 
particularly in intellectual combat. No one can fail to see 
how the higher institutions break out new roads and lead 
the thinking of the world to higher planes. And surely 
no schoolman can ignore the fact that the vitalizing, the 
energizing, and the steadying of the lower schools must 
necessarily come from the higher schools. But there are 
those who will deny that it is desirable that all children 
shall go to college. There are enough who do not think 
that it is better to have a college degree and admission to 
a profession, with little adaptation to it and little to do after 
it, than it is to master a manual vocation and have plenty 
to do. There are people in the world who dare to suspect 
that many a one becomes really unbalanced and pretty 
nearly useless through college teaching and college study, 
when he might have been happy and useful if conditions 
and normal inclinations had been regarded, and if he had 
found himself in a work where he could have had the 
reward and the joy which come from accomplishing things. 
There are those who even venture to suspect that men and 
women with work which they love, and the steadiness and 



98 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

balance and respect which they gain by doing it, are safer 
citizens and more attractive characters than men and 
women who have been through the schools without being 
able to put their training to the doing of things which are 
of moment to the world. 

It is not a matter of the value of the higher learning to 
the world at large ; it is a matter of the power and purpose 
of each individual to make it of most use to himself. The 
unambitious or the incapable rich, who are not in danger 
of doing much anyway, may very well go to college, if 
they can be kept from ruining the colleges while there. 
The rich who have work and sand in them will ordinarily 
seize upon college training while they enlarge the substance 
and illustrate the point and power of it. The poor must 
balance values. They will coolly calculate the worth of it 
to any plans which they may have, or they will leave it 
to chance and take whatever the consequences may be. 
If there is something like a definite purpose in mind, if the 
college training is put to real use, the consequence will be 
a finished and resourceful character, and the harder the 
work and the more the sacrifices, the stronger and the more 
dependable the character will be. If, however, there is no 
serious plan or purpose about it, no power to appreciate 
and adapt the college training and discipline, the result is 
likely to be a failure. 

The percentage of men who have reached the highest 
positions of leadership and influence without the training 
of the most advanced schools, as compared with those who 
have had that advantage, is surprisingly large. It is 
because they have had the stuff in them, and it has been 
developed and seasoned in life. They have not depended 
upon books, or been largely controlled by theories ; they 
have squared their lives with the actualities of living ; they 
have been both patient and aggressive ; they have found the 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 99 

way to accomplish son^ething worth while. It was some- 
thing not set forth in books. But this has been suggestive 
to the college ; and the courses of study, the characteristics 
of teachers, the methods of instruction, and the atmosphere 
of the places have been so radically modified in the inter- 
ests of doing as against talking that, aside from the in- 
creased number of students who go to college, the advan- 
tages to the college man as against the other are very 
substantially enlarged. And, of course, with an independ- 
ent, sane, and balanced character, having the elements 
of strength and success anyway, the advantages of a college 
training cannot be overestimated. 

It is not true that good citizenship is gauged by the depth 
of culturing study or familiarity with philosophical theory. 
It rests upon the balanced sense which is the joint product 
of decent breeding, of familiarity with men and things, 
and of the labor which shows in things accomplished, 
either manual or intellectual, and in sweat upon the brow. 
The man who mends your shoes, or makes your clothes, 
is likely to average just as safe and potential a citizen as 
the one who tries to train your refractory stomach, the one 
who fills you up with economic theory, or the one who 
supplies theological deductions to your mystified soul. The 
one who produces physical results in life is certainly no 
less to be counted upon than the one who writes the more 
freely when he is not obliged to be troubled with any facts. 

These considerations are at the bottom of the wide- 
spread criticism against our public educational system. 
Everybody worth considering knows that the mere ability 
to read and write is no adequate equipment for efficiency 
in our complex life, but everybody also knows that no sys- 
tem of training, no matter how elaborate, which leads inevi- 
tably to pursuits which are exclusively intellectual or only 
culturing, will sustain our complex civiUzation. It is right 



100 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

here that the plan and scope of our western universities, 
very largely state universities, are pushing them strongly 
to the front rank in American higher education. The 
feeling is very common that there is no sufficient reason 
why the courses of study and the influences of the lower 
schools should lead decisively to those higher institutions 
which are only culturing or professional, or to those depart- 
ments of universities which are essentially so. There is a 
strong and justifiable sentiment that the work of the ele- 
mentary and secondary schools does not support the in- 
dustrial as well as the classical or professional depart- 
ments in the universities which have provided for all phases 
of human learning. There is a strong and sustained senti- 
ment that the elementary schools ought to do more for the 
pupils who are not going to college, if the advantages of 
our popular system of education are to be equal for all. 
And there is a decided and a justifiable belief that the 
elementary schools, taken as a whole, train for versatility 
more than for exactness, and that, either because of this, 
or because they have been loaded with too much, or both, 
they do not turn out pupils who can do any definite thing 
very satisfactorily when they must go to work. 

The common sentiment of the country fully sympa- 
thizes with the old line literary colleges. It feels that there 
is a place for them, and wishes them well. It has abun- 
dantly demonstrated its decisive support of university 
training in aid of the industries. But it demands that 
the elementary training shall lead more decisively to the 
industries and to business, whether pupils are going to the 
advanced schools or are going to work; and that the work 
of the lower schools shall be suflSciently concentrated and 
made sufficiently exact to support the expectation that 
pupils shall be able to read intelligently, write legibly, 
perform mathematical processes readily and correctly. 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 101 

and entertain serious notions of real work when they leave 
the schools. The objection is not that the schools do other 
things, but that they do not do these things before other 
things, and that the result amounts to a discrimination 
» against the industrial masses, the very ones who stand 
most in need of free education. 

Then the whole question as to what the schools shall do 
is an open one. Apparently, they must have less, rather 
than more, to do. If not, then a large part of the children 
must have less. It would seem that there will have to be 
more differentiation of courses, with reference to future 
living. There will have to be more drill and more firmness 
of treatment in the purely elementary work, at least. 
The work will have to be adapted to years so that when- 
ever a child leaves school he may be able to do very well 
what the world may justly expect of one of his age. There 
will have to be more exact attention to present actualities 
than to remote possibihties. It would not be strange if 
the lower schools were yet required to give every child not 
only the means of informing himself and of expressing him- 
self, but also a definite trade or vocation through which 
he may earn a living. This would be doing less for the chil- 
dren who will never go to college than most of the larger 
towns are already doing for those who go to the high school, 
or than naost of the states are already doing for the thou- 
sands who go to the state universities. 

Here is the great, overwhelming, and difficult question in 
American education. It is to be settled out of the abundant 
experience, the democratic purpose, and the natural and 
logical unfolding of the free life of the nation. 

There is still another matter pertinent to this subject. 
There is a frequently expressed disposition to hold the 
schools responsible for about everything that goes wrong 
in the country. If there is an epidemic of crime, or an out- 



102 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

break of objectionable business methods, or any other 
distinct evidence of widespread moral turpitude, or if all 
boys and girls are not more completely ready for a swifter 
and more complex life than was ever expected in all history 
before, the schools are taken to task for it. 

Every step and every influence of the common schools 
make for character. It is true that religious instruction is 
not very common, — not as common as it used to be, — 
but it is also true that it is as common as denominational 
opposition will permit. There is nothing done that does not 
contribute to cleanness and decency in living, to exactness 
and correctness in thinking, and to refinement and trueness 
in feeling. Everything is done in these directions up to the 
very limits of opportunity. 

It is a fundamental policy of this country that political 
officers shall not meddle with denominational instruction, 
and that ecclesiastical officers shall not bend the policies 
of the state to denominational ends. It is not because of 
any indifference to religion, but because of the necessities 
of the case in a cosmopolitan population of freemen, and 
in a state which is opposed to all favoritism and stands for 
equal and exact justice for all. This policy leaves religious 
teaching to the family and to the church, unless the uni- 
versal consent invites the common schools to give it. Be- 
tween the schools, and the churches with their auxiliary 
agencies, and the family life the children are being trained 
in free religion and sound morals about as well as can be 
expected, and quite as well as in any days of yore. Indeed, 
our democratic life and our free and rational teaching 
are developing a people with more of the elements of unde- 
filed religion and with less of the factors which have bur- 
dened true religion than has been common in other lands 
and in other days. And in this the common schools are 
doing all that the sound moral purpose of the country will 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 103 

sustain, and all that the settled political theory of the 
country will permit. 

But there is a difficulty, extended and discouraging, 
outside of the schools. It operates in spite of the schools. 
It grows out of the American disposition to place freedom 
above security, to protect liberty at all hazards, and take 
the chances of license and its consequences. 

Many of the common usages and some of the most con- 
spicuous object lessons in the country make for dishonesty 
rather than integrity. An infinite number of people have 
become what once would have been thought exceedingly 
rich. When one becomes halfway rich he becomes money 
mad and resorts to methods for overreaching all the rest. 
There is lack of law and lack of prosecutors to stop him, 
and his success in gaining money by immoral methods and 
in keeping out of jail — through the help of astute lawyers 
and abhorrent forces — predisposes too many others to 
copy his example. Some phase of this thing is everywhere 
in the land, and it corrupts the life, particularly the young 
Ufe, of the country. Are the schools responsible for that ? 

Again, the railroads are great educators. They educate 
us in much that is good, and also in much that is bad. 
They train us in promptness — and in evasiveness. The 
laws concerning them are not yet very well settled. They 
observe no moral restraints not fixed by law, and they are 
past masters in the art of changing and evading the laws 
which they dislike. Men who are all that can be desired in 
their individual characters are often all that is undesirable 
in corporation service. But this is not all, and perhaps 
it is not the worst. They assume that every one else will 
violate or evade the law if he dare. For example, they 
assume that everybody will steal from them, and, with 
something of a fellow feeling for those who do, the matter 
is soon dropped when they find it out. They closely inspect 



104 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and often ofiFend honest people who board their trains. 
When they find one on their trains wrongfully, they put 
him off, and that is the end of it. The decent folk resent 
the discourteous treatment and are predisposed to retahate, 
and the indecent folk who violate laws are so seldom pun- 
ished that they are predisposed to try it again. Upon 
an European railroad every one is treated with politeness. 
It is assumed that one who boards a train has the right. 
If one is found on board without a ticket or money he is 
carried to the next station and put in jail. The road and 
the public prosecutors make punishment sure and severe. 
The honest people get decent treatment, and the dishonest 
ones get the punishment they deserve. It educates in 
integrity more than we are accustomed to think. It is 
particularly impressive upon the ignorant and upon the 
young. If, then, native honesty, or at least, correct living, 
is more common among the masses of an European than 
of an American city, are the American schools responsible 
for that ? 

Yet again, nothing is a legal crime until a statute makes 
it so. Criminal procedure rests upon legislative acts and 
not upon the common law. The regulation and punish- 
ment of crime is far from settled. It has not kept pace with 
the progress of the country. It is so dilatory and uncertain 
as to shame us. Money can defer punishment indefinitely 
except in the most flagrant and noted cases, — and often, 
indeed, in those. Public officers charged with prosecu- 
tions are sometimes found dividing the plunder with thieves 
in consideration of immunity from punishment. The 
thing pervades our affairs broadly and makes a vicious 
impress upon many lives. 

If business greed and cunning employ chemistry to 
cheapen food stuffs, and even medicines, by eighty or 
ninety per cent without lowering the cost to the buyer; 



UNSETTLED QUESTIONS 105 

if directors enrich themselves at the expense of their trusts 
by having secret wheels within wheels ; if there is no longer 
a standard of value for materials sold or service rendered 
except what " the traffic will bear " or what can be collected ; 
and if the young or the inexperienced are misled or de- 
ceived by the everyday schemes of the prosperous or the 
rich which are violative of law or against good conscience 
and fair dealing, are the schools to be taxed with it all ? 

Here is a great matter outside of the schools which is 
unsettled and which will have to be settled. It is wholly 
unfair to charge any lack of moral character or of common 
honesty which may be discerned in the country to the plan 
and scope of the educational system. When the law is 
perfected and is observed, when all may know that it will 
be speedy and sure and equal in its application to all, 
the matter of correct living and of moral character in this 
country seems likely to rest upon as sure a foundation as 
in any other country. The difficulty in this behalf seems 
to lie in the rapid growth in population, in the overwhelm- 
ing changes in manner of life, and in the backwardness 
of legal and administrative systems, rather than in funda- 
mental political principles or in the plan and scheme of 
the schools. 

The men and women of the schools are so accustomed 
to settle things that they are rather predisposed to shoulder 
all the burdens that are put upon them and determine all the 
hard problems that come up. The unsettled questions that 
are legitimately and necessarily upon the officers and 
teachers of the schools are many enough and heavy enough. 
If they throw back upon the country the hard nuts which 
are not theirs at all, if they resent the constant attempt to 
use the schools for special ends, if they confine them to 
what they must do to vindicate our political and educa- 
tional theories and justify the money they cost, they will 



106 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

have quite enough to do. As some matters that are outside 
of the schools approach solution, the'unsettled questions 
that are necessarily inside of the schools will settle more 
easily. 

The nation is just beginning to realize that the funda- 
mental political principle which holds all men and women 
equal before the law, with the now well-developed national 
policy which provides free instruction to the very limits of 
human knowledge to all who will come and take it, in- 
volves an expense of unexpected magnitude, and presents 
questions of grave difficulty in school organization and 
administration. But there will be no turning back. More 
cheerfully than the people meet any other tax, more cheer- 
fully than any other people ever met any tax not vital to 
the national defense and the saving of life, the American 
people supply and will supply the funds for universal and 
liberal education. The difficulties will not be met in a 
year; they will never be settled in a corner. They will be 
solved by the rational projection of the political theories 
which are the inspiration and the guide of the nation's life. 
They will be met with courage and confidence, even with 
wit and enthusiasm. They will be settled through discus- 
sion, and yet more through experience. Not all that we 
plan will come to pass. The unexpected will often happen, 
and in time we are likely to see that the unexpected is better 
than the plan we made. The logically progressive purpose 
of our millions of freemen, the gradually unfolding scheme 
of our nation's mission in the world, advancing in accord 
with a plan that is more than human, will overcome 
difficulties and break out the roads for a sane and balanced 
system of education, which will give most to the nation 
through the opportunity it will hold out and the encour- 
agement it will give to every one. 



VIII 

THE NEED OF A FEDERAL PLAN 

There is very little adaptation of instruments or of ad- 
ministrative methods to ends, very little that is expressive 
of professional experience and opinion, and practically 
nothing in the way of logical scheme, or comprehensive 
plan, or progressive outlook, about the educational arrange- 
ments of the federal government. Congressional legisla- 
tion has ordinarily resulted from isolated and political 
initiative, and executive officers have resorted to expedi- 
ents, both good and bad, to meet passing exigencies. It has 
never before been understood that the general govern- 
ment had large or continuing educational responsibilities, 
and now, when it is clear enough that it has, the plans 
for meeting them are illogical and inadequate. 

There is excuse for the situation, but none for not mend- 
ing it. The federal Constitution contains no mention of 
schools. Aside from a brief and barren suggestion of a 
national university, there was, so far as we know, no dis- 
cussion of education in the Constitutional Convention. 
It was not an ignorant or obtuse convention. Twenty-nine 
of the fifty-five members were college bred, and of the 
twenty-six who were not, Washington and Franklin were 
two. Six members of the convention were clergymen. 
The convention clearly assumed that, so far as education 
was a function of government, it was a function of the 
states. There were less than a dozen primitive colleges in 
the country which had been chartered by the king, but in 
each case it had been done at the instance of one of the 
colonies, and the resulting college had become the college 



108 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of the colony and then of the state. Several of the state 
constitutions had already provided for colleges. State- 
supported systems of elementary schools had not yet been 
provided by law or established in fact, but things were 
beginning to move rather strongly, for in the next half 
dozen years definite and decisive beginnings in that direc- 
tion were made. Wherever there was a state, the state 
had done and expected to do it all. Where there was no 
state, Congress felt responsibility and acted freely. Even 
before the Constitutional Convention the Continental 
Congress had, in 1785, reserved the lot No. 16, and one 
third of all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines, for the 
maintenance of schools in each township which should be 
laid out in the Northwest Territory. And all are familiar 
with the provision in the Ordinance of 1787 for the gov- 
ernment of that territory, that "religion, morality, and 
knowledge being necessary to good government and the 
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education 
shall forever be encouraged." So it is evident that the very 
definite and common understanding at the time of making 
the "more perfect union" must have been that the federal 
government had distinct responsibility about schools and 
morals in federal territory beyond the limits of organized 
states, but that this function was reserved to the states 
wherever there were or whenever there should be organ- 
ized states. 

The practice has squared with this understanding. Con- 
gress has often legislated upon, and federal executive 
oflBcers have never hesitated to act upon, school matters 
in the territories; never in the states. The United States 
government has several times made gifts to education in 
the states, and has sometimes made these conditional upon 
certain acts by the states, but it has never invaded the prin- 
ciple that wherever there is a state the educational system 



THE NEED OF A FEDERAL PLAN 109 

is a state system, over which the state government holds 
the exclusive and sovereign authority. 

The United States government in 1867 created a federal 
bureau of education, which gathers and distributes edu- 
cational information from and to all parts of the world, 
and has become a sort of clearing house for information 
concerning the schools for all the states of the Union; 
but it has never been invested with the slightest authority 
over any matter within the limit of a state. The present 
object, however, is not to emphasize that fact so much as 
to point out that this organized and quite natural instru- 
mentality of federal educational administration has never 
been utilized to meet the national responsibility for schools, 
recently much enlarged, or to propagate educational ac- 
tivities outside of the schools in federal territory and to 
inquire why. 

The situation has grown up gradually. In the territories 
of Arizona, Hawaii, and New Mexico there are superin- 
tendents of public instruction, appointed by the territorial 
governors. The superintendents report to the governors, 
who are appointed by the President, and the governors 
make occasional references to education in their reports 
to the secretary of the interior. There is no professional 
and no located responsibility. The bureau of education 
has nothing whatever to do with the matter. 

In the District of Columbia the management of the 
schools is intrusted to a board of education appointed by 
the judges of the supreme court of the district. This 
board appoints a superintendent of schools. The schools 
are supported one half by the district and one half by the 
United States. The bureau of education has no relation , 
to the subject. Once, at least, when the school system of 
the district got into a muddle, the United States com- 
missioner of education was asked to intervene and 



110 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

straighten things out, but that was only a temporary ex- 
pedient in an emergency. 

Congress formerly made appropriations for the schools 
of the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Semi- 
nole nations in the Indian Territory, but since the territory 
has been included in the state of Oklahoma, the special 
governmental organization of the five tribes has been dis- 
continued by the national government. Appropriations 
for the schools were continued until the state should 
develop adequate educational institutions. The number 
of rural schools in the Indian Territory district is being 
increased rapidly, so that practically all educational ac- 
tivities are now under the control of the state. 

The other Indian schools are under a superintendent 
appointed by the President, who reports to the com- 
missioner of Indian affairs and is under the direction of 
the commissioner of Indian affairs and the secretary of 
the interior. The United States commissioner of educa- 
tion is allowed no official word concerning them. 

A dual administrative scheme for managing schools seems 
to be deemed necessary for Alaska. Schools for white chil- 
dren and civilized children of mixed blood are under the 
supervision of the governor, who is ex officio superintend- 
ent of public instruction, and Congress makes appropria- 
tions for schools for natives, which are subject to the sec- 
retary of the interior and are in some measure, at his 
pleasure, committed by him to the commissioner of edu- 
cation. 

The military and naval academies are wholly subject 
to the secretaries of war and of the navy, and no distinct 
schoolman carries the light of his guild into the recesses 
of their affairs. 

The educational activities of the department of agri- 
culture have been much expanded and accelerated in re- 



THE NEED OF A FEDERAL PLAN 111 

cent years. Through appropriations to the agricultural 
colleges and experiment stations the federal authority has 
already made rather long, but perhaps pardonable, inroads 
into old-time fundamental principles, but the federal 
bureau of education has no word about them. 

Perhaps, above all, the war with Spain brought to the 
people, and particularly to the government, of the United 
States, for the first time, the difficult problems associated 
with the education of great numbers of unlettered people 
in somewhat densely settled territory under conditions 
wholly new to us. 

As to Porto Rico, Congress provided that the President 
should appoint a commissioner of education who super- 
vises public instruction and approves all disbursements on 
account thereof. The only function of the United States 
commissioner of education in this connection is that the 
law directs the Porto Rico commissioner to make such 
reports to Congress as the United States commissioner re- 
quires. The obfuscation assured by legally empowering 
an officer to define the reports which another officer with 
whom he has nothing else to do shall make to Congress, is 
a novelty in legislation. 

The general direction of educational matters in the Phil- 
ippine Islands is committed to the secretary of public in- 
struction of the islands, who is a member of the Philippine 
Commission. The United States commissioner of education 
has not the slightest official relation to education in the 
Philippine Islands. All the functions exercised in the 
United States in that behalf are vested in the bureau of 
insular affairs of the war department. 

The educational system of Cuba was reorganized in some 
measure during our military occupancy, but it was exclu- 
sively a military matter. 

The reason for the lack of logical plan about all this has 



112 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

already been suggested, but what is the reason why no one 
in position to accomplish things seems to have thought of 
the desirability of correlating the growing educational work 
of the government and giving it the advantage of guidance 
by the federal bureau of education ? 

It cannot be because the national bureau has been in 
inefficient hands. It has never been without a highly ca- 
pable and efficient commissioner at its head. During all 
of the forty years of the existence of the bureau the com- 
missioner has been a man of very high public standing, and 
nearly all of that time he has been one of the foremost edu- 
cationists of the country. The staff of the bureau has al- 
ways embraced many educational experts whose services 
have been widely recognized by the people who are best 
informed. The one thing needful to the bureau has been 
real school work to be done. 

The government has not been studying the logic of the 
situation. It has permitted itself to be moved by inexperi- 
ence, if not sordidness, and it has met exigency with make- 
shift. The fact that the makeshift was perhaps temporarily 
necessary ought not to be allowed to develop it into a per- 
manent policy. It was all well enough that the American 
regular troops could temporarily provide teachers for the 
Philippines, and it was a distinct administrative accom- 
plishment to secure a thousand teachers of pretty fair gen- 
eral average, and to transport them to and get them at work 
among such a far-away people, without incurring criticism 
of the details of the heavy task. But the atmosphere of 
the war department is not a permanent stimulant to con- 
structive work in education. 

It is important to education in all territory over which 
the flag of the Union floats that the principle shall be firmly 
established that the spirit of the common school system 
bars all partisanship from its administration, and also that 



THE NEED OF A FEDERAL PLAN 113 

the proper organization and administration of the schools 
claim professional and expert service of a very distinct 
order. The educational system is not a thing upon which 
any party or class or sect can be allowed to uplift itself, and 
the administration of the system is not a thing to be held 
of minor importance and tossed about in divers depart- 
ments which manage the conspicuous and imperative af- 
fairs of a great government. It is obviously as important 
that these principles shall be asserted in our territories and 
among our island peoples as in the already organized states. 
Indeed, it is much more important in remote federal terri- 
tory than in our states, because in such territory there is not 
that public sentiment which quickens and guides and limits 
official action in educational administration as in the states, 
where American feeling prevails and institutions have 
taken form and the philosophy of our educational system 
is understood and accepted. 

If we were to apply federal school policies to the state 
of New York, for instance, we would reduce the state edu- 
cation department to the function of getting information 
about schools when school officers are anxious to supply 
it, and to giving benevolent advice about schools when 
people will considerately come and listen. We would ap- 
point superintendents of schools in our large cities through 
the mayors, and have them report to the legislature through 
the secretary of state, when they feel like it. We would 
annex the schools in the valley of the St. Lawrence to the 
agricultural department, and those in the southern tier of 
counties to the labor department. In all seriousness, we 
would have to go back in the history of the state for more 
than fifty years, when the secretary of state was super- 
intendent of common schools, and all school manage- 
ment, both local and general, was practically at one with 
politics. And no matter how far we might go back, we 



114 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

should find nothing to equal the inconsistency of having 
a completely organized, capable, and non-partisan instru- 
mentality for school administration ready at hand and 
refusing to use it. 

The influences which are at the top of an administrative 
organization inevitably bear upon appointments therein 
and in time affect the conduct and shape the character of 
all who are connected with it. It must be so as to federal 
schools. This is not blaming federal officers. They are 
entitled to commendation for very good administration un- 
der untoward and perverse circumstances. The desirabil- 
ity of popular control wherever there is the enlightenment 
which may safely exercise it, and of the association of lay- 
men with pedagogues in the management of schools, is of 
course recognized. Even then it is necessary to observe the 
fundamental principles which underlie our educational 
policies, and to effect the kind of organization and move 
upon the lines which experience has shown to be essential 
to results in administration. The business side of federal 
or territorial schools may properly enough rest with busi- 
ness officials, but the professional side ought clearly to be 
in the charge of professional men and women. The gov- 
ernment of the United States has not yet reached the cor- 
rect lines of procedure in education. The reason is not far 
afield. It is found in politics and in officialism. Territorial 
governors, members of Congress, department officials, never 
wave aside any opportunity to make appointments, and 
when the occasion arises for the United States commis- 
sioner of education to contend with them about educa- 
tional policies in the corridors and committee rooms of the 
national capitol, the commissioner cannot bring himself to 
do it, and he would seem weak indeed if he tried. 

If the United States bureau is to be confined to statistics 
and information, it would seem better that it be not per- 



THE NEED OF A FEDERAL PLAN 115 

mitted to be regarded as an administrative or propagating 
instrument of the federal government at all. In that case 
it might better be completely made up of statisticians and 
editors, and constituted a section in the census office. It 
would there have definite and undoubted authority to do 
something. 

But that is not what is needed. With a comprehensive 
plan, and concentrated administration, and actual respon- 
sibilities, the federal education office would attain such sig- 
nificance that it could get the attention of Congress and the 
country. Again, the experience of the government in deal- 
ing with one class of schools would be quickly available 
in dealing with every other class. The government needs, 
for example, to make a serious and scientific study of the 
whole matter of adapting our philosophy and practice con- 
cerning common schools to irresponsible, dependent, non- 
Caucasian peoples, and can do it more completely and 
quickly through a unified organization in which all of the 
conditions and all of the experiences may be brought to bear 
upon one another. Yet, again, the very enlargement of the 
national bureau through bringing together the number of 
people who are now engaged at Washington in looking 
after federal schools, would bring together, in time, if not 
at once, a much stronger body of educational experts ; and 
it would insure for each interest, in large measure, the com- 
bined judgment of all. All this would develop a new class 
of educational literature which would be of service to all 
the world. There is a distinct financial loss to the school 
work which the government is trying to do, through the 
lack of comprehensive plan ; and there is a distinct moral 
loss to the nation, and to education the world over, because 
of the freakish and fragmentary methods which are being 
employed. 

But perhaps a weightier consideration than any that has 



116 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

yet been suggested remains to be mentioned. There are 
needed educational activities outside of the schools. Li- 
braries, study clubs, home study, are within the functions 
of democratic government. It is hard to set things right 
after they have got started in the wrong way. The further 
they have gone in the wrong way the harder it is. The fed- 
eral educational activities not only need to be related to- 
gether so that they may support one another, and they not 
only need to be systematized and professionalized, but they 
need to be extended and sanely energized, made universal, 
and charged with responsibility for all manner of educa- 
tional activities in all federal territory. 

Why should our federal Union maintain at its capitol an 
educational ofloice without using it? If it is to maintain 
such an office, why should it neglect and belittle it ? Why 
should it make the pay of the commissioner so small and 
his functions so insignificant that any man fit to speak for 
the nation upon education must suffer humiliation before 
he is allowed to do it.? Why not have a definite federal 
educational plan, which is above partisanship, and an edu- 
cational organization worthy of such a nation ? Why longer 
allow education to seem to come after everything else in 
the federal scheme, when the conditions are here which 
ought to put it to the fore ? Why not recognize the princi- 
ples which are fundamental, and the policies which are 
fruitful, and the concentration which will of itself effect 
large and lasting accomplishments in education ? In a word, 
why does not some strong hand that is able to do things 
go about a reorganization at Washington which will enable 
the government to increase its educational efficiency, log- 
ically meet its responsibilities to its new subjects, and at 
the same time set a good example to all of the states and all 
of the world ? 



II 

ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY 
SCHOOLS 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 

This is a very free country. Above all the constitutional 
nations we have a maximum of freedom and a minimum of 
restraint. More restraint is likely to be needed in order to 
keep so much freedom. But the added restraint will never 
be made to run against harmless talk. It will be against 
acts rather than speech, against violence rather than 
foolishness, against dangers rather than demands. In other 
constitutional governments a subject may talk too freely 
about the monarch or censure cabinet officers at his peril, 
but it will never be so of an American citizen and any policy 
of his state. If Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson did 
not settle that question while they lived, their constancy 
and their courage contained the fertile germs which in this 
soil soon settled it for all time to come. 

This privilege is not to be regarded lightly. It is a 
beneficent freedom. It makes the United States a very ag- 
gressive and a very progressive country. The common talk 
often starts without thought, but discussion produces 
thought. There is intellectual pleasure and quickening 
in it all. No one hesitates about proposing or demanding 
something because that something is new. Anticipation 
waits upon the surprising and progress gains ground 
through the unexpected. Out of it all we have become 
proverbially good-natured and considerate of one another. 
We do not take all propositions as seriously as our fathers 
did. If we get material advantage out of the propositions 
made and the things done which come to something, so we 
get our proverbial good-nature out of all the discussion and 



120 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

out of the things done which come to grief; and that is 
national progress too. This is not saying that we take really 
important things less seriously than our fathers did. Upon 
the really serious concerns of individual and of social living, 
the popular thought is no less set and the common emotions 
no less true, than in the days of the men and women whose 
virtues we admire and whose history we inherit and extol. 
On the whole, things have gone very well. It would be 
weak to believe that on all points we are ahead of all other 
peoples, but we are likely to have enough points to the good 
to make us reasonably safe if any unregenerate should have 
the hardihood to draw any very exact international com- 
parisons. 

All this is abundantly illustrated by the propositions 
arising in the schools and the demands that are made upon 
them. The educational system is omnipresent, and it is 
largely owned and managed by the public. It is open to 
popular criticism and very subject to popular demands. 
Because its teaching force is so lacking in definite legal 
standing, and therefore also in permanency and professional 
independence, and because the trustees and directors set 
by the people to manage it are so frequently changed, and 
therefore so professionally inexperienced, the system is 
especially open to demands and particularly sensitive to 
criticism. And it must be said, also, that the people in the 
schools more than keep up with the people outside in ad- 
vancing fertile and prolific propositions, and in trying ex- 
periments of their own . Too much resistance might be worse 
than too much responsiveness, but there are a great many 
people — in the schools and out — who would willingly 
dare the peril that would make them sure whether it is or not. 

A great many different people conie in quick succession 
to the desk of an officer charged with the responsibility 
of general administration in the schools. 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 121 

Here is a matron who urges that domestic science, by 
which she means cooking, sewing, milHneiy, be taught. 

Here is the commander of the Grand Army of the Repub- 
lic to arrange for more work which will stir patriotism. 

Here is a man who has learned how to modulate the 
voice and breathe properly, who wants to instruct all the 
teachers in his specialty. 

Here is the superintendent of farmers' institutes who 
insists that all the schools should teach agriculture. 

Here is a committee of a mothers' congress, which has 
been appointed to arrange for more motherly management 
of the teachers and hy the committee. 

Here is the agent who claims that the schools cannot 
afford and should not dare to go longer without the books 
of his house. 

Here is a merchant who tells us that when boys get 
through school they are worthless in business, and that we 
are bound to make them good for something to tradesmen. 

Here is one who wants more Latin, and next to him are 
two others who want more practical work and less Latin. 

Here is one charged with the responsibility of getting a 
teacher appointed, who suggests that he represents some 
organization which he intimates should be placated. 

Here is a man who wants military drill in the schools 
because he thinks it makes boys manly, and elbowing him 
is another who is opposed to it because, as he insists, it 
breeds the spirit of conquest. 

Here is one who wants a dentist employed by the public 
to look after the children's teeth; and he has with him a 
friend who wants the schools to supply a training in Span- 
ish so as to fit the youngsters to manage our new posses- 
sions. 

Here is another who wants warm lunches arid swim- 
ming pools in the schools, so that children may not be kept 



122 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

from learning because of hunger, and so that they may learn 
the virtue of cleanliness. 

Here is a mother who wants the principal of the high 
school disciplined because he insisted, when her son, a 
pupil, started a newspaper bearing the name of the school 
and purporting to represent it, that the boy and the paper 
should be amenable to the discipline of the school. 

Here is one who with little disguise would have some 
schools better suited to the rich than to the poor, and others 
better adapted to the poor than to the rich; and here is 
another who would have the schools see to it that one boy 
is especially prepared for college and another especially 
trained to go to work. 

Here, in quick succession, are several gentlemen who 
are warm about certain political, social, and scientific 
theories which they think are vital to the people and should 
be exploited in the schools. 

Here is one who wants the schools to train professional 
or mechanical specialists to the end that when the pupils 
leave the schools they may be at once capable of earning 
a competency. 

Here is a mild looking man who demands that the schools 
shall lose no time in aiding the faithful to reform the spell- 
ing, and he leaves no doubt of the fact that he would die 
for the cause. 

Here is a physiological psychologist who pretty nearly de- 
sires to measure and weigh and count the eyebrows of all 
the children every day from their twelfth to their sixteenth 
year, in order to sustain psychological contentions con- 
cerning physiology which the professors of physiology 
deny. 

Here is a newspaper demanding radical changes in the 
schools, not so much because the editor is overwhelmed 
by his personal responsibility as because, from his expert 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 123 

newspaper instinct, he knows that everybody is interested 
in the schools. 

Here is one who urges that what all the teachers need 
is professional training or wide reading in educational 
history and philosophy with plenty of methods of teaching, 
and here is another who insists with no less emphasis that 
before one can become much of a teacher he must not only 
read but masticate a good deal besides educational theory, 
and that methods do not count for much before teachers' 
minds are filled with material for ready use. 

Here is one who declares that it is the business of the 
schools to make men of character rather than men of learn- 
ing, that character is based upon religion, and that the 
schools are godless and not acceptable because the Bible 
is not read ; and here is another who insists that the Bible 
shall not be read because the teacher does not understand 
it correctly, or will not read it according to the lights of 
a particular church. 

Here is one who demands that all examinations as a basis 
of promotion be abolished, and another who begs that all 
flagellations, as the last resort in the interest of behavior, 
be likewise permanently stayed. 

Here is one who wants to do something in the schools in 
order to prove that she is really of some use in the world, 
and claims any sort of new work which will attract atten- 
tion provided she may do it, and here is another who would 
have schools which are maintained at common cost so 
poorly sustained as to help none but the very poor who can 
ajfford no better. 

This enumeration might easily go much further, but the 
list is already longer than need be for the purpose of illus- 
tration. Who is to meet all of these demands ? 

There must be no mistaking the fact that the schools 
are the people's schools, and that their development must 



124 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

be upon lines which decisive public sentiment lays down. 
We may well try to enlighten and influence public opinion, 
but whatever course it takes we need not fear it. Our free- 
flowing democratic opinions, resulting from our full dis- 
cussions, assured in our constitutions, aided by the abun- 
dance of our legislation, and expressed in the frequent 
changes in our laws, have developed, and will continue 
to develop, institutions as positive, as substantial, and as 
beneficent as they are characteristic and unique. This it is 
that distinguishes our status from that of the constitutional 
governments of the Old World. They have had the chance 
to get as much out of parliamentary debates, and out 
of the English, French, Dutch, and German revolutions, 
as we have. But they have not had the intermixing and the 
continuous shaking-up that we have had; they have not 
had their blood warmed and their minds quickened by 
other factors of population as ours have been, and so they 
have not had the chance, or been able to make the most 
of a chance, as we have. To the free growth and the 
aggressive self-assertiveness of our public opinion we owe 
our marked characteristics and our distinguishing institu- 
tions. For this we may well be grateful. We need not 
be afraid of it. We may well bear our share in making it. 
But w:hen we discern it, we shall do well if we fall in 
with it. 

And this principle is to be observed negatively as well as 
positively. If we are to fall in with the things which popular 
sentiment demands, we are likewise bound to refrain from 
the things which popular sentiment will not support. We 
are not to take steps of questionable wisdom until directed 
by competent and responsible authority. Such authority 
is justified in resenting acts completed which it does not 
approve and has not been permitted to consider. And, 
moreover, we are not to mistake a swallow for a summer. 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 125 

— we are not to take an assurance or a demand as a posi- 
tive indication of public opinion. 

It is not well to assume that the management of the 
people's schools by the people's boards is a vicious factor 
in the educational plan. It is true that it takes a man who 
becomes a member of a school board without any recent 
knowledge of accepted educational theory and practice, a 
good while to come into workable relations with the pre- 
vailing order of things, and it often happens that by the 
time he has come up to the maximum of his efficiency he 
has to make way for another, and that in consequence the 
board and the system are in a constant state of agitation 
and uncertainty. It is also true that forceful men who 
become members of school boards often go further than is 
well in disrupting situations rather than in mending them, 
and sometimes put personal marks upon school systems, 
which might much better have been omitted. It is even 
sometimes true, though happily not very often, that a 
vicious man gets into a school board and sells out a sacred 
trust for the grossest gain. These things must be counted 
among the disadvantages inseparably associated with self- 
government. Still, there are more advantages than dis- 
advantages. 

The vicious men in school boards are very few in number. 
They make a bad mess of it while they are there, and they 
deserve more drastic punishment than they get; but there 
are hardly enough of them to be in the reckoning. There 
are a good many ambitious men who come into school 
boards with thoughts of saying something and doing some- 
thing. Betipaes they say something or do something that 
ploughs into educational theory and practice or stirs up 
settled conditions. But that educational theory which 
cannot stand the rub ought to be stirred up, and there 
are a great many settled educational situations which need 



126 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

abrasion by vigorous men. Ninety-five per cent of all mem- 
bers of school boards feel their responsibility, are proud 
to be associated with the schools, and anxious to do what 
they can for their betterment. Patrons should exchange 
views with them, without conceit and without obsequious- 
ness, with knowledge of the fact that it is as important that 
the schools shall be impressed with the common thought 
and the popular feeling which these men must be assumed 
to represent, as that they shall aim to become the rigid and 
exact exponents of pedagogical theory in that far-away 
day when the men and women of the schools may unite 
upon a code of educational practice which is broad enough 
and seaworthy enough to invite the confidence of the 
world's people. 

Much of the special strength and glory of our schools comes 
to them through that popular administration which is often 
so troublesome and obnoxious to the teachers. Because 
the schools cannot be subjected to any manner of exclusive- 
ness — whether of government, of set or sect, of a system 
of philosophical thinking, or yet of fixed devices and meth- 
ods of teaching — but are in the nature of things bound 
to be flexibly adaptable to the needs and reasonably ex- 
pressive of the sense of a people, they are filled with that 
virile power which gives them conspicuous place in the 
educational work of the world. It is the gradual evolution 
of plans and policies through the association of popular 
administration with teaching experience and philosophical 
thinking that is giving us an educational system which 
is not being imposed upon the people but which is theirs, 
has been made by them, and is cherished by them, and 
which is binding a wonderfully dissimilar people into a ho- 
mogeneous nation, and training that nation for a very great 
mission in the world. 

There is a truly considerable and wholly respectable 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 127 

number who object to the fundamental plan of the public 
schools on the radical ground that the work of the church 
and the work of the school should go together. It is a con- 
viction with them, and the sincerity of it is not lacking. The 
common school system has grown out of the very genius 
of our plan of government, and is held by the ovei-whelming 
majority to be vital to the oneness and therefore to the life 
of the nation. Dissent from this long and widely accepted 
view may be regretted, but when the dissent is based upon 
religious grounds, the people who advance it must be 
respected. The fact of it is not sufficient to justify con- 
tinuous ill will or rasping words over the matter. The ob- 
jection runs against the plan and spirit of the public school 
system, rather than against those who are in charge of that 
system. If there is much desire in any quarter to have a 
fresh determination of the subject, that fact may be re- 
gretted in the interest of national comity and religious 
brotherhood, but the right to have it could hardly be de- 
nied. In that event it is a matter for the people to act upon 
through the ordinary channels of public opinion, through 
elections, through the representative assemblies, through 
the courts that determine the law, and the officers who 
execute it. It is not a matter of school administration. 
We have no discretion about the fundamentals of the school 
system. We are to observe them. Certainly we do not rest 
our interest in the schools wholly on the ground of employ- 
ment. We believe in the plan and we breathe the spirit 
of the system, and it is our right to be entirely free in our 
belief and in our expression of it; but it is too much to 
assume that the responsibility for defending the ground- 
work of the public schools is upon us. If we make schools 
which meet the needs and assure the rights of all, we shall 
accomplish the task which is set for us. If the necessity 
arises, the mighty forces which are behind us may be 



128 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

trusted to make satisfactory deliverances upon national 
educational theories and policies. 

We are bound to abstain from all that may unnecessarily 
prevent, as much as we are bound to aid whatever will 
promote, cooperative efficiency among all the educational 
instrumentalities of the country. Whenever a private 
establishment claims to be a school, unless there are ear- 
marks of deceit and fraud, it is entitled to fraternal regard 
and sympathy. It is not to be much meddled with by new 
laws or by public officers unless conditions make investiga- 
tions necessary for the public protection. It seems bound 
to make known the facts concerning the attendance and the 
kind of instruction it is giving, because the withholding 
of such information can serve no good purpose if the insti- 
tution is all right, and the having of it is needful to the 
making and the execution of the necessary plans of the state, 
as well as to the strengthening of the bonds which ought 
to exist between all beneficent undertakings. If it seeks 
recognition for its work in the plans of the state or asks 
any public commendation or certification of what it is 
doing, it is bound to submit to such inspection as must 
be the necessary basis of public action. While it cannot 
share in public support without being regulated by public 
law and reviewed by public management, the thought of 
our people and particularly the spirit of our work should 
save it from being annoyed by officials, and give it a 
natural right to participate in the common sympathy and 
encouragement of all who hold citizenship in the democracy 
of learning. 

If it is well that the public and private schools shall stand 
in agreeable relations to one another, it has become educa- 
tionally necessary that the upper, the middle, and the lower 
schools shall understand and sustain one another. Their 
work is interlacing. Many young people are going to col- 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 129 

lege ; still more want to go ; and the more to go the better. 
The road must be an open, a continuous, and a smooth one. 
But it is not to be fenced so that none can turn aside from it. 
The work of the elementary schools is not to be shaped with 
special reference to preparing pupils for college, because 
more than ninety-five per cent of all the pupils of the ele- 
mentary schools never go beyond them. What the Ameri- 
can school system needs is to unload some of the special- 
ties which the enthusiasts have induced the managers to 
take on, and then to follow a simple and balanced policy, 
with opportunities which best meet the needs of all and 
with special advantages to none. If a community is wealthy 
and strong, and willing to elaborate those opportunities, 
well and good ; if a state will carry them to the very point 
of complete preparation for professional or industrial lead- 
ership, well and good, with added emphasis; but, regard- 
less of this, an American state falls short of a high duty if it 
does not assure to every boy and girl within its borders 
that exact training in the rudiments which is the founda- 
tion of all the rest and the guaranty of opportunity in the 
world. To do this, while we encourage all who will go to 
the very heights of learning, the unity and solidarity of the 
educational system are vital. 

The educational system is growing in unity. It is grow- 
ing slowly, but perhaps as rapidly as conditions will permit. 
Any real progress must be made by the college and univer- 
sity people, and while they are generally willing they are usu- 
ally weighted with a sort of refined clumsiness which is hin- 
dering. Many of them have never been in, and have not the 
spirit or the viewpoint of, the common schools, and their 
specialized work tends to carry them further from the 
common outlook ; and when they do try to show the good 
will which they have, the result is often that of a watch- 
maker trying to train a farmer's boy in horsemanship. 



130 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

There must be more resistive power in the school system ; 
more discrimination in what the schools shall do. When 
a feature is in itself a good one, it is not very difficult for 
an enthusiast to get a school board or a legislature to add 
it to the course. Yet the assumption of it may be a positive 
public mistake. Many a thing is excellent when carried on 
by private enterprise or by organizations moved by benevo- 
lent impulses, but vicious when it enters into the policy of 
the state. There is a wide difference in the outcome be- 
tween doing a thing voluntarily, and compelling all the peo- 
ple to do it, as we do when the schools take it up. It is not 
saying that the state is not to encourage all sound intel- 
lectual and moral activities, to say that it is bad to pursue 
a course which leads the people to depend upon the state 
when they ought to depend upon themselves ; to count upon 
the money of the state when they ought to count upon 
money of their own. The schools are not asylums. Popu- 
lar education is free and is not to smack of charity. If the 
conditions of life are specially hard in some places, they 
must be met by private or public charity. The schools are 
not organized for that, and ought not to be charged with it. 
The common schools cannot go much into the accomplish- 
ments. Interest in the good and the true and the beautiful 
is to be nourished through an artistic and a hygienic build- 
ing, with attractive yards about it and masterpieces of 
art within it; by teachers who are models for youth, and by 
teaching which is exact, gentle, firm, and true. The place 
for experimentation is in the laboratories of the universities 
and not in the classrooms of the lower schools. And there 
are some things which may better be discussed among men, 
or among women, or in the medical colleges, or in the sci- 
entific associations, than in miscellaneous assemblies of 
teachers. 

The work of the schools should lead toward doing things 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 131 

as well as toward knowing things. But, unmistakably, there 
is a waste of time over novelties. We are discovering un- 
known faculties and remote possibilities, and we often 
urge a docile board to put in a novel course when well-known 
things or established plans need our attention completely. 
We cannot arrange the schools for every child or every fac- 
ulty. We are to make the schools for all ; we, are to adjust 
the children to the schools; and we are to inspire them to 
help themselves. 

It is difficult to withhold support from any proposition 
which may seem to add a feature to the public undertak- 
ings, when that feature is likely to gratify a factor of our 
population. It is more difficult still to oppose movements 
from within the schools when they are advanced with the 
most genuine and sincere purposes, even though they can- 
not be accepted upon any recognized theory of sound pub- 
lic policy or of true educational progress. Yet we may well 
believe that this must be done more decisively if the edu- 
cational system is to have and to hold that measure of pub- 
lic confidence which is necessary to its best usefulness. 

The common thought of this nation is that every state, 
in the exercise of the sovereign authority which it possesses 
over educational matters, is not only bound to assure to 
every child his opportunity, but also to see that he has it 
even though he be unfortunate in his parentage and in his 
circumstances. This assurance is to be made good through 
such aid or such directions to poor or dilatory communities 
as conditions may make necessary. This much being as- 
sured, all communities are empowered to go as far as their 
means and their spirit will suggest in elaborating the 
schools or multiplying the agencies of general culture. No 
valid objection can be made to public secondary schools 
wherever the proximity of population will support them, 
and accordingly in every considerable town the high school 



132 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

is as much a part of the free school system as the elemen- 
tary school. And it will be surprising if in time the older 
states do not follow the newer ones in providing college 
and university training without charge to such of their 
youth as are prepared for it and will come and take it. In 
the large cities, where it may easily be done, the work of 
the secondary, schools has been, or will be, somewhat sep- 
arated and distinguished with a view to better serving the 
different circumstances or intentions of students, and the 
states have, or will, set up industrial, scientific, and pro- 
fessional, as well as literary colleges, unless private en- 
dowments and long labor have already developed a suffi- 
cient number that are good enough and free enough to make 
such a course by the state unnecessary. This is not charity 
and is not looked upon as paternalistic or socialistic in this 
country. It accords with the spirit and is a part of the pur- 
pose of the nation. It is not saying that we are to shut out 
of the schools the progress and the information of our gen- 
eration, when we say that there shall not be ignorance or 
confusion about the exact and exacting drudgery and 
methods which have been necessary to train self-conscious 
power into minds in all generations gone, and which will 
be necessary in all generations to come. The sense of the 
nation turns against the complexity of work in the lower 
schools which has come from the inborn American ten- 
dency to experiment and multiply, from the urgency of am- 
bitious superintendents, from the desire to please some 
professional or industrial interest in the community, from 
the influence of some political theory, or from the insist- 
ence of teachers of special subjects in the schools above, 
until the aggregate has become more conducive to intel- 
lectual amusement than to mental discipline and the power 
of discriminating outlook. 

If we would be more cautious about all this, more con- 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 133 

servative about things which have not been proved, more 
decisive about withstanding demands which are not gen- 
eral ; or, better still, if we would go much further and sim- 
plify the programme of the schools by cutting out the things 
which may be easily learned in a quarter of the time later, 
if there is ever any occasion to learn them, or the things 
preparatory to the schools above which are so poorly done 
that they have to be thoroughly unlearned before a fair start 
can be made in the advanced schools, we might hope to 
bring the work of the schools within the possibilities of 
popular comprehension and sympathy, and thus to win 
enlarged public confidence and added freedom in admin- 
istration, which would mean very much to the educational 
system and to the nation. 

The school system needs freedom. The organizing and 
the teaching must be free or it will be futile. If it has to be 
done under influences which control without understand- 
ing it, or through agencies which would despoil it for pur- 
poses of their own, there is little hope of realizing any edu- 
cational ideals. There is to be nothing in or about the 
schools which does not make for absolute freedom in shap- 
ing courses, in securing teachers of the highest and most 
uniform excellence, or in assuring to teachers their free 
opportunity to inspire, to train, and to uplift. But such free- 
dom can only go with confidence. Wherever the school 
system lacks in symmetry and efficiency, and so in self- 
confidence and resistive power, it is peculiarly open to 
experiments which ought to be forbidden and to demands 
which should be resisted, but which it lacks both the sense 
to resent and the strength to resist. Wherever it has such 
sense and strength, frivolous experiments and partisan 
demands do not so much persist. So the school system is 
going from good to better, or from bad to worse. 

It seems paradoxical to some to say that freedom is based 



134 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

upon restraint. It is true of all freedom and as eminently 
true of educational freedom as of any other. The schools 
cannot be free in their making or in their teaching unless 
there is outside pressure, in the way of legal enactments 
and accepted understandings, which keep them hard at 
designated functions, and unless within them there are ac- 
cepted standards and ends of teaching sufficiently defined 
and binding to assure the accomplishment of set and defi- 
nite tasks. With the limits and requirements so defined, 
and with sufficient knowledge that they must be observed, 
there may be that liberty which is necessary to act upon 
one's own thought and experience and to follow one's own 
ways, which is so vital to real teaching. 

We can listen to no demand which is not made in the 
interest of all. We can willingly permit no advantage to 
one as against another. It would be as well to acquiesce 
in the government of the schools by a sectarian denomina- 
tion as by a political party. They are to be governed by 
teachers who are free and have experienced educational 
opinion, working in harmony and respect with laymen 
who stand for public sentiment and the common interests, 
and who serve no master save the great people whom they 
represent and the mighty democratic advance whose picket 
guard they are. 

These are some of the principles which ought to move 
us in conceding or in resisting the innumerable demands 
upon the schools. Perhaps naturally enough, the trouble- 
some things in administration, for the most part the un- 
worthy rather than the legitimate demands upon the 
schools, have been presented. But the wrongs and the trou- 
bles pass away and are forgotten. Things which should 
not be do not last. Things accomplished make other 
steps in the golden stairway of opportunity and are the 
things which stay. They are the matters of real concern. 



DEMANDS UPON THE SCHOOLS 135 

Let no -demand that we help men and women be lightly 
taken. If one who knows the fields and woods moves us to 
have others know them better, let us say that he is right 
and try to have it so. If an old soldier of the Grand Army 
would have us do a little more to quicken the love for the 
flag so dear to him, let us try to do it. If one with an eye 
for the beautiful and a heart for the clean demands that a 
school building, in and out, be attractive and wholesome, 
free from filth and helpful to health and to better living, let 
us not be annoyed, but try to make it so. If youth cannot 
foresee and cannot ask for inspiration, let those who do 
see and understand give the word that may unlock the 
very depths. Even if the truth halts and conscience sleeps, 
let us recall that it is not strange, and offer the help that 
may meet their mute claims. If a mother has a feeling, 
which she shows but cannot name, that her daughter 
should be taught by one no less cultured and no less a gen- 
tlewoman than herself , let us not resent it, but do what may 
be done to have it so, and not only so for her, but for all. 
If a father fears that his son's time is being wasted by one 
in a teacher's place who cannot teach, and thinks it his 
business to know about it, let us be glad that there are such 
fathers, and remember that that is precisely what fathers are 
for. Let us look to see if his complaint is just, and if it is 
help him to his highest right on earth. If any unselfishly 
apprehend that the plans of the schools do not, in the 
largest measure, serve the purpose of the state, let us put 
our heads together to make them do it. But let us not 
make the mistake of thinking that these things may be 
done by adding courses or by multiplying devices. Before 
boys and girls give much support to the state, they will 
have to do a whole lot of business for themselves. It makes 
not so much difference what it is, if they have enthusiasm 
for it, if it is hard enough to make them tired, and if they 



136 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

hold to it long enough to have the satisfaction and the 
growth which go with accomplishment. Insipidity is a 
worse fault than brusqueness in one who lays any claim 
to be a teacher. Confidence and steadiness and consider- 
ateness are essential. The idea should never gain ground 
that the schools are to give clothing and lunches to pupils 
in order to help them. The only way they can ever accom- 
plish anything is by knowing things on their own account 
and doing things for themselves. The word "charity" 
should never be set above the door. " Opportunity " should 
be written over the portals. As we consolidate the educa- 
tional system, we gain added triumphs for popular edu- 
cation. The support of all the schools should be brought 
to the support of each, so that every one may have the 
utmost. After the elementary schools, the greater number 
will leave when they must. Whenever they go they should 
have the utmost that can be given them up to that time. 
And, at whatever time they go, they should carry with 
them not only the rudiments of learning, which will help 
them to do almost everything in this country, but also the 
elementary factors of true and ambitious living. 



II 

SCIENCE IN THE ELEMENTARY GRADES 

What is science ? Some of the old writers- called it " God's 
sight," and the characterization was not at all inappro- 
priate. Science is the truth of the Almighty overcoming 
obstacles, working its way out through difficulties, and 
marching on to its final triumph. Science and nature and 
Deity are very nearly the same. They are in full and har- 
monious accord. They constitute a power which is every- 
where present and always active. No matter about any 
peculiarities of their personal beliefs, no matter in what 
kind of a church they worship, all men realize the existence 
of such a Power in the world and know that it is every- 
where present in the universe and that it is always active. 
They know that it controls both mind and matter; that 
flowers bloom, that electric current flows, that minds un- 
fold, and that planets revolve and keep to their courses 
under its laws. 

Frequently man is unable to understand its processes. 
Names are cumbersome. The language of science is dis- 
couraging. But learning and research are continually help- 
ing him. Much has been revealed to this generation which 
has been withheld from all that have gone before it. One 
difficulty after another is removed, one achievement after 
another is accomplished, mysteries are explained, remote 
facts come into relationship, the harmonies of the universe 
are established, and man stands in the presence of the 
mighty Power that is behind it all. 

That is sometimes called science which is not science. 
In reaching from the known into the unknown there is 



138 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

danger of letting go of the known and falling into the un- 
fathomable unknown. There is intellectual dissipation for 
some people in contentions which no one can establish 
and no one can overturn. True science holds on to what 
is known and keeps in touch with what is material. It is 
intensely practical. Its mission is not to involve in mystery, 
but to clear up the sight and unlock the truth. 

Man has learned to know how vital it is to his happi- 
ness and usefulness that he keep in accord with the Power 
that rules the universe, and that he act in harmony with 
scientific knowledge. He has experimented enough to see 
how dangerous it is to attempt to cross the boundaries 
which nature sets against human action. He is surely ex- 
perienced enough to understand both the fascination of 
scientific study and the vital relation of its results to the 
uplifting of the human race. Human laws, which merely 
regulate the social organization, must necessarily differ 
according to the circumstances and experiences of nations 
and change with their changing conditions, but the laws 
of nature are universal and unchangeable. The human 
life which measurably expands to its possibilities must 
read the book of nature and act upon its precepts. The 
life which does this is enriched and gains capacity for 
enjoyment. 

If this knowledge is of consequence to the individual, 
so it is to the school. If it has lifted up the individual, so 
it has the school. If it has brought a new light into the 
life of the individual, so it has into the life of the school. 
If it is a stairway to the high ends of human existence, it is, 
of course, a vital element in the curriculum of the schools. 

Science is evolving a scientific house for the use of the 
schools. Art and science are both revealing things that 
our fathers never thought of. The one is showing how 
cultivated taste and skill can make a building which will 



SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY GRx\DES 139 

please the eye and train the aesthetic taste, for the same 
money that was expended upon the unsightly structure 
of the last generation, and experience has shown that even 
the sense of the child is strong enough to respect and care 
for it if it is pleasing to the eye and is worthy of being cared 
for. Art has sho^n that no school authority can afford to 
ignore its entreaties. But science is more imperious. By 
consequences and results it has shown that no school 
authority dare disregard its injunctions, for its mission is 
to conserve the health of the pupils and promote the effec- 
tiveness of the school. 

Science concerns itself with the character of the ground 
upon which the building is to stand and the conditions 
with which it is to be surrounded. It locates the build- 
ing with reference to the points of the compass and the 
advantages of sunlight. It discriminates in material; it 
puts the basement floor above the water line; it regulates 
the height of stairs; it asks for sheltering porches and 
demands that outer doors shall swing outward. Above 
all, it looks to the size, and shape, and temperature, and 
ventilation, and lighting of rooms. It says that the good 
health of each child requires at least fifteen square feet 
of floor space and two hundred cubic feet of air space; 
that fresh air, direct from the outside, is even more im- 
portant than warm air, and that every child must have at 
least thirty cubic feet of it per minute, if re-breathing the 
same air and the consequent likelihood of disease are to 
be avoided. Science prescribes the methods for getting 
warm and fresh air into the room and for taking dead air 
and foul gases out of the room, and provides the instru- 
ments for determining the extent to which it is accom- 
plished. Science looks to the tinting of the walls and 
takes light from the ceiling or the left side for the purpose 
of protecting the eyesight of pupils. Thus sanitation. 



140 ^' AMERICAN EDUCATION 

hygiene, and also seats, blackboards, and innumerable 
other matters receive scientific attention ; these serve to 
indicate the extent to which knowledge is evolving a health- 
ful and pleasurable school-room. Of course, the perfect 
building has not yet come, and the schools have many 
old buildings on their hands which they have inherited, and 
some people are slow to see the value of scientific know- 
ledge, but when the new schoolhouse is compared with 
the old one, and when it is realized that no intelligent parent 
will longer be indifferent, and no intelligent official dare 
be indifferent to these things, it is apparent with what rapid 
strides the light and truth have been advancing. 

If science has been potent in the improvement of the 
schoolhouse, so it has surely been in the preparation of 
the teacher. Fifty years is a brief period in the history 
of education, but the last fifty years constitute a period 
which will be memorable, for that period has witnessed 
the rapid and mature development of the science of teach- 
ing, and that development has worked a complete revolu- 
tion in the conduct of the schools. Our fathers were accus- 
tomed to think that any one who knew a thing could teach 
it. They were far from the truth. Investigation and experi- 
ence have shown the truth to be that the bare possession 
of knowledge is but one element in the equipment of a 
teacher. He must know human nature; he must under- 
stand the particular mind to be taught and be able to come 
into harmonious relations with it; he must engage its at- 
tention, arouse its enthusiasm, and make it not only recep- 
tive of but eager for knowledge, before it can gain know- 
ledge which will give it strength. A mere imitator cannot 
do this ; much less can one who knows nothing of scientific 
processes and is not even an imitator. Pestalozzi declared 
that " education is the generation of power." The elements 
of power must exist for the generation of power. The 



SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY GRADES 141 

teacher must understand principles and be able to employ 
the best methods at the right time and in the right way, 
with a trained and discriminating judgment. The span 
of the memory, the influence of the imagination, the force 
of reason, all of the processes of the child-mind, the trend 
of the feelings, the strength of the attachments, all the 
natural likes and dislikes of children, have been studied 
with scientific care in order to know how to make the work 
of the schools most prolific of good. 

Of course, this thing may be overdone. There is great 
possibility of error. Facts may be apparent rather than 
real. Deductions may be lame. Logic may be spread out 
until it is thin. There is a rich field for ridicule. That has 
been the common lot of science in all lands and all ages. 
Still science is conquering the world. The truth keeps 
working its way out and marching on. It is doing so with 
majestic step in this case. The scientific study of the child 
and the scientific training of the teacher have already 
revolutionized the work of the schools to such an extent 
that a plain statement of what the new schools are doing 
is regarded by the last generation with disbelief or incre- 
dulity, and a plain statement of what the old schools did 
is felt by the new generation to be false or unfairly exagger- 
ated. 

As the physicians of the past generations gave physics 
and emetics, and put on leeches and let blood indiscrimi- 
nately, often breaking down the constitutions they were em- 
ployed to build up, so the teachers of past generations 
fumed, and scolded, and strutted, and thrashed, and thus 
humiliated the characters they were employed to uplift. 
Occasionally there was a physician and occasionally there 
was a teacher with a clearer vision than the rest; occasion- 
ally there was a patient with a constitution which was 
bound to outwit the doctor, and occasionally there was a 



142 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

character bound to outlive the absurd discipline of the 
school. 

That discipline was almost uniformly harsh. The 
government was not one of reason, but of force. The 
teacher, if a woman, was employed in the summer time 
to teach the girls because she was related to the trustee, or 
to his cousins, or his aunts ; and, if a man, was employed to 
teach the boys in the winter because he had superior 
strength, agility, and courage. The threatening talk and the 
menacing conduct of the teacher stirred all the risibilities 
and combativeness of human nature. The teacher was 
thought great by the people if he could conquer the school 
after stirring its passions. A substantial ferule was always 
in sight. Frequently a rawhide whip was kept in the room. 
Many teachers carried a rattan in the hand continually. 
Flagellations were of everyday occurrence. Frequently 
they were cruel in the extreme. Struggles and blows and 
outcries which no intelligent parent of our day would per- 
mit his child to witness, and from which he would himself 
turn or stop by force, were very ordinary. The ingenuity 
of the teacher was taxed to find methods and instruments 
of punishment. Children were made to hold weights at 
arm's length, to " sit on nothing " with the back against the 
wall, or to do anything which would be excruciating, hu- 
miliating, and degrading. If they flinched they were whipped 
for it. To make the thing especially obnoxious boys were 
sometimes sent out to get whips with which to be whipped ; 
and sometimes boys who were not involved in trouble were 
sent for whips with which to whip their brothers or asso- 
ciates. Fear of punishment was always present. 

Of course, children had spirit then as now, and that 
spirit resented and organized to resist this stupid brutality. 
Teachers were frequently unable to keep order. Seri- 
ous struggles between the pupils and the teacher were 



SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY GRADES 143 

common. Mr. George H. Martin, who would certainly 
make no unguarded statement, says in his history of the 
school system of Massachusetts that during one winter 
fifty years ago more than three hundred schools were 
broken up in that state by the insubordination of pupils. 
The common proceeding was to put the teacher out of 
the schoolhouse. The old pedagogue who has survived 
is inclined to boast of the fact that he stayed in the school- 
house at all; it is the tallest feather in his cap. 

At home the child was asked not what he did in school 
during the day, but whether he was whipped. This, with 
" chores " morning and afternoon, with the dearth of games 
and of books, and with brimstone theology in allopathic 
doses nights and Sundays and between times, made an 
environment which was not well calculated to ennoble the 
nature of the child, as it certainly was not likely to promote 
cheerfulness in his meditations. If substantial character 
afterward developed, as it very frequently did, the fact was 
due to other circumstances and considerations which have 
very largely ceased to exist. If strong manhood followed 
it was not because of this harsh and senseless disciplinary 
treatment, but in spite of it. 

Fortunately it has all passed away, for scientific study 
of the secret springs of human motives and actions showed, 
and experience proved, that such a plan of management 
rested upon a basis which was wholly fallacious, that the 
more force there was the more there would have to be, that 
it degraded the teacher, that it set up a standard of excel- 
lence in the minds of the people which was utterly false, 
and was a bar to the fruitfulness and effectiveness of the 
teacher's work. It brutalized the school and absorbed the 
productive energies of the instructor. It put the child out 
of teachable relations with the teacher, and scientific 
thought would not have it so. It was against nature, it was 



144 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

opposed to the truth; and nature and truth will have their 
way. And they have been having their way, for in the 
person of a teacher more intelligent and better prepared 
they have appealed to the reason, the affections, the ambi- 
tions, the honor; they have made study both objective and 
attractive ; they have given the opening mind the pleasure 
of learning things and accomplishing things; they have 
helped and inspired and trusted, until they have brought 
pupils into relations which make teaching practicable 
and into an atmosphere where teaching must be a thing 
of energy and power. 

The present age is both a material and scientific one. It 
is unlike any which has preceded it. It did not come by 
conquest. It broke upon us as quietly as the dawn of a 
summer morning. It has witnessed a new love for Nature 
and an added interest in her wonderful secrets and pro- 
cesses. It is an age of searching inquiry and close dis- 
cussion. The false and the sham will be revealed; that 
which cannot stand discussion will go to the wall; the 
truth will work its way out. It is not only an age of demo- 
lition, but one of accomplishment. It is an age of material 
development, for it is an age of constructive genius. It is 
an age of intellectual energy, for it is an age of disciplined 
thought. It is essentially an age of scientific knowledge 
and scientific power. 

Science is the interpretation of nature. But nature is 
manifest in tfie butterfly, the squirrel, and the robin, as 
well as in the mammoths of the deep or the mastodons 
of the ancients ; it is in the opening blade and the blooming 
flower as well as in the burning mountain and the blinding 
storm ; it is in the rocks and shells as well as in the invisible 
current which drives the machinery of our factories or that 
other invisible force which propels the machinery of..our 
lives. There is science for the child as well as science for 



SCIENCE IN ELEMENTARY GRADES 145 

the savant. The activity of the child and the wisdom of 
the scholar each have their uses in unfolding the secrets 
of science. 

There is joy and fascination in nature, for the nature 
that is about us is in harmony with the nature that is 
within us. 

There 's a blush on the fruit and a smile on the flower 
And a laugh on the brook as it runs to the sea. 

There is moral power in science. Who can see a dozen 
magnetized needles, floating on corks in a basin of water, 
repel one another, and range themselves at equal distances 
apart, and remain in exact equilibrium so long as the similar 
poles are all pointing up or down and then see the disturb- 
ance and the clashing which ensue when one of them 
is reversed, without thinking of what is behind all this ? 
Who can see the earth turn under the swinging pendulum 
without knowing that this did not come by accident or 
chance, and without revering the Power which controls 
this motion and holds the spheres upon their courses ? 

There is intellectual awakening in the study of science. 
No one can engage in it without acquiring the habit of 
inquiry and investigation ; no one can be under its spell 
without thought which is original; and these are the 
principal instrumentalities of the new education. 

Scientific investigation, above almost any other work 
that can be taken up in the school-room, is promotive 
of cordial relations between teacher and pupil. They 
work together for a common end, and that end is the 
truth. They are in harmony with a common object, and 
therefore in harmony with each other. The tension is 
removed, the problem of management is reduced in its 
proportions if not entirely eliminated, and teachable 
relations are established between teacher and child, and 



146 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

enthusiasm carries them on. Then it is evident how much 
more may be accomplished when instructor and pupil help 
each other, than when indifference prevails, or when they 
wear each others' lives with bitterness, or mechanically 
observe only the requirements of an armed truce. 

Then the study of the simpler sciences, experimentally 
and in the methods of the laboratory, is both practicable 
and essential at an early age, and will promote the work 
of the schools both directly and by reflex and stimulating 
influence on the school organization, on the betterment 
of the building, on the growth of the teacher, on the tem- 
perament of the pupils, and on all the lines of work in which 
the schools engage. 

Five hundred thousand teachers instruct eighteen mil- 
lions of children in the public schools of the United States. 
There are many more thousands in the schools of the other 
constitutional governments of the world. The elementary 
free school is indeed becoming universal and the teaching 
fraternity world-wide. No army in the world holds greater 
power in its hand. Upon no other does so much depend. 
If this great fraternity will think upon the movements of 
the past centuries toward a higher life; if it will keep in 
sympathy with nature ; if it will seek a clearer understand- 
ing of the leadings of the overruling power in the world ; 
if it will have a larger interest in scientific study ; then, it will 
have a deeper reverence for scientific truth ; it will realize 
the assurance of Coleridge that "as we strive to ascend 
we will ascend in the striving"; it will see an unwonted 
meaning in the words of a greater than Coleridge, who said, 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make 
you free " ; and it will have added power because it will 
have added joy in the schools. 



m 

THE RISE OF HIGH SCHOOLS 

There have been three fairly well-defined steps in the 
making of American secondary schools. First, there was 
the Latin grammar school of the colonies. Second, came 
the academy which prevailed and flourished from the 
Revolutionary War till past the middle of the nineteenth 
century. And third, there is the public high school which 
has come into its estate in the last half century. 

The colonial grammar school took its name and its char- 
acter from the early cathedral grammar schools and the 
monasteries. There were not many of them, and they were 
for the greater part both local and temporary. They were 
in almost every instance fitting schools for the colleges. 
They did not scatter their affections. Each one was the 
instrument and feeder of a particular college. They pre- 
pared pupils for the college entrance examinations, but 
they had to go far to supplement the meagre instruction 
received in the home schools, or perhaps oftener in the 
homes where there were no schools at all. Of course they 
observed and inculcated the religious beliefs of the colleges 
which they supported. 

The character of the New England grammar schools in 
the middle of the seventeenth century will be seen from 
the statement that " when scholars had so profited at the 
grammar schools that they could read any classical author 
into English and readily make and speak true Latin, and 
write it in verse as well as in prose, and perfectly decline the 
paradigms of nouns and verbs in the Greek tongues, they 
were judged capable of admission in Harvard College." 



148 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

At Princeton, a century later, it was announced that 
"candidates must be capable of composing grammatical 
Latin, translating Virgil, Cicero's orations, and the four 
evangelists in Greek, and must understand the principal 
rules of vulgar arithmetic," and this controlled the work 
of such fitting schools as there were at that time in the 
middle colonies. 

These schools are commonly called "free schools," but 
they were not wholly free. They claimed tuition fees, 
depended upon generous gifts which they often secured, 
and looked to permanent endowments which some of them 
realized. Often gifts of lands or some special revenues 
were made by the town. Certainly they were not public 
in the sense that they were supported by uniform taxation. 
The term "free school" seems to have been used to desig- 
nate schools not restricted to a particular class of pupils. 

New England led in the formation of these early classical 
schools because New England was New England. Institu- 
tions in New England naturally enough copied institutional 
life in Old England. The English peasantry had no schools. 
The English nobility and aristocracy maintained colleges 
and fitting schools of their own. The grammar schools, 
like the colleges of which they were really a part, came 
from the higher classes and were necessarily exclusive. 
There was a fine aristocracy, indeed a gifted and, speaking 
relatively, a learned aristocracy in New England, and 
naturally enough it followed the ways of the mother coun- 
try. Often it improved upon those ways. The growing 
spirit of democracy made this particularly true in education. 

The Dutch were the first to set up the really free elemen- 
tary school in America. They brought more democracy 
with them than the Puritans did. The Pilgrims had more 
of it, man for man, than either; but there were not enough 
of them to bring a very great quantity or propagate it very 



THE RISE .OF HIGH SCHOOLS 149 

rapidly. Before the English overthrew the Dutch there 
were many elementary schools in New Netherland. There 
were only one or two grammar or classical schools. After 
the English triumphed all of the Dutch schools disap- 
peared. Education was a bone of contention. The Eng- 
lish had no disposition to encourage elementary schools 
for Dutchmen. It seemed perilous to them. In the more 
than a century from the English invasion to the Revolution 
there were two, and only two, schools established by the 
Dutch with the English official approval. Both were gram- 
mar schools. The English crown could tolerate Dutch 
classical schools rather than Dutch elementary schools. 
That much seemed reasonably safe when the teachers had 
to be approved by English bishops. One of these schools 
was as transitory as classical; the other was splendidly 
persistent, for it merged into Columbia University. 

There is nothing more interesting in our history, or in any 
history, than the relation of the democratic to the edu- 
cational advance. The growth of sentiment and feeling 
which forced the Revolution was quickly reflected in inno- 
vations upon the character of the schools. The Colonial 
grammar schools were pushed down into territory unoc- 
cupied by the exclusive institutions of such aristocracy 
as there was. They were the instruments of a distinct 
copartnership between church and state. They were com- 
moner and stronger where that copartnership was the 
widest and the most exact. They were few and weak where 
that relation was non-existent or ineffective. But of course 
until real democracy began to assert itself there were no 
schools save the exclusive ones provided by the crown 
and the church. With the approach of the Revolution and 
resulting from the same causes, new social, ecclesiastical, 
and political conditions produced a new order of schools. 
The tendency toward the independence of governmental 



150 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and ecclesiastical affairs was developing, and the close 
relation between church and state which so long obtained 
in the Puritan theocracy was weakening. The effect upon 
the schools was twofold, — to make the lower grades of 
schools the instruments of the democratic advance, and 
to stimulate private and denominational effort in the inter- 
est of the old order. The results were the common elemen- 
tary school, developed more slowly than we are accustomed 
to think, and also a new institution of much higher grade 
under private and denominational control, with more exact 
legal and corporate organization and powers, and not 
entirely without state largess. The grammar schools did 
not wholly disappear, but they rapidly decreased in num- 
bers; and such as lived contracted their curriculums, and 
shed their denominational bent. A very few, notably the 
Boston Latin School, have been adopted by the public, 
and have come down to the present day, retaining a dis- 
tinct classical curriculum. Wherever this has occurred it 
has been in close association with other secondary schools 
with wider courses and freer electives. 

Even before the Revolution an academy appeared here 
and there; but it needed independence to settle matters. 
And independence did settle matters. It is too often for- 
gotten that there were two English parties on the other side 
in the American Revolution. The Puritan party was not 
a democratic institution, but it was being trained to more 
liberal and independent thinking, and was coming to see 
the need or at least the inevitable advance of democratic 
institutions. The English in America who had not yet 
become full-fledged Americans were Puritans. They had 
no deep affection for the Cavaliers or the Royal Cabal at 
London, and their political and religious faith and their 
pioneer life made them the best fighters the world ever 
saw. Real separation made complete independents and 



THE RISE OF HIGH SCHOOLS 151 

pretty fair democrats of them all. They were a little slow 
and needed time, but time made them about the best Amer- 
icans in the lot. They joined the issue and got up splendid 
little scrimmages at Lexington and Concord. They did 
some awful fighting at Bunker Hill, but lost the hill. They 
were not without humor, grim as it was, when they told the 
British commander they would like to sell him some more 
hills at the same cost. But the military power of the Cava- 
lier political cabal, for the time being in the control of the 
English government, was outwitted on Long Island and 
pretty largely absorbed at Saratoga. It is interesting to 
hear Sir George Trevelyan, a good enough English author- 
ity, in the best and most judicial history of the Revolution- 
ary struggle which has been written, tell us that we were 
then fighting the English government in order to keep 
and enlarge English liberty. Whether or not it would have 
otherwise been lost, as a matter of fact we did keep it and 
enlarge it. Under rather bad treatment after the war, which 
we all regret now, the Royalists either came to be Ameri- 
cans, or went back to England, or over to Canada, and left 
a pure democracy to begin to break out new roads and 
go ahead as fast as it would. 

The elimination of the influence of English politics from 
the affairs of government in America, the removal of the 
oversight of the English Church over religious affairs in 
this country, and particularly the distinct enunciation of 
the entire separation of church and state in the scheme of 
government which rose above the fires of the Revolution, 
gave decisive impulse to new educational ideas and dis- 
tinct form and energy to a new manner of school. 

The American academy was not a democratic institution, 
but it was more democratic than the colleges and Latin 
schools which antedated it. It was as democratic as the 
hold-over influences or the uncertain political theories of 



152 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the time would permit it to be. It had an independent legal 
organization with an independent though perhaps a slen- 
der endowment and a self -perpetuating control. If it aimed 
to prepare pupils for college it undertook even more to 
prepare pupils for life when they were not going to college. 
Often its work was wider than that of the college itself. It 
laid new stress on the study of English, including its gram- 
mar, rhetoric, and the art of public speaking. It went more 
broadly into mathematics, including surveying and navi- 
gation, and it made important beginnings in the natural 
sciences. Chemistry and physics were favorite subjects. 
History was universally taught. Even architecture and 
stenography got a start. French was very common, and 
German appeared occasionally. Latin and Greek contin- 
ued to be upheld, but they were paralleled by innumerable 
courses which were clearly enough of democratic origin 
and destined to change the outlook of communities and 
propagate the democratic principle in affairs. It was at- 
tached to the fortunes of no party in politics, and, although 
it was devoutly religious in spirit, it of necessity came to 
serve a constituency which was much broader than the 
membership of any single church. It exacted fees, but 
commonly far below the measure of its necessities, and its 
democratic tendencies disposed it to help all whom it 
could. It surely needed the aid which the state was dis- 
posed to give, and as the state was a democratic one the 
fact stimulated the democracy of the academy itself. 
' The academies were the outcome of the best thinking of 
almost a century of American progress. They were the 
embodiment of as fine heroisms as ever found expression 
in any educational institution, and there have been no finer 
in the world. They were as democratic as the most aggres- 
sive democratic spirit of their day could make them. They 
did a work entitling them to enduring gratitude because 



THE RISE OF HIGH SCHOOLS 153 

of wide and permanent value. Then as a prevailing class 
they were forced aside by a new class of institutions which 
sprang out of fresh and advancing thought, were more 
democratic, met a wholesome and imperative demand 
for a wider range of work, had a much wider and more 
potential influence, and gained new and very different 
ends. 

The academy was an incorporated and endowed insti- 
tution, though commonly so slenderly endowed as to be 
transitory. The public high school is supported by taxa- 
tion, managed by public officers, and more independent 
and permanent. The high school is free; the academy 
was as free as it could be, but it lived largely upon fees. 
The difference appeared in the pupils, in the instruction, 
in the outlook, and in the measure of stability. The inter- 
est of the mass is the best endowment an institution can 
have. It is even more steadfast than statutes. The taxing 
power is not so spasmodic as beneficence. 

• The work of the academy connected with the colleges' 
and had no organic connections below; that of the high 
school connects with the public elementary schools be- 
low and forces the colleges after long centuries of opposing 
theories to establish relations with the upper end of the 
high school courses or waive the hope of preeminence. 
- The academy was pushed down into unoccupied ter- ' 
ritory from above ; the high school was pushed up into the 
same field from below. The business of one was to serve 
the interests that were above but not quite altogether 
heavenly ; that of the other is to help on the broader and 
more worldly concerns that are below. In time it tran- 
spired that with all this in the same territory there was now 
and then some abrasion. 

. The function of the academy was to prepare for college * 
and incidentally for life ; that of the high school is to pre- 



154 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

pare for life and incidentally for college. The one was 
classical with some practicalities; the other is severely 
practical, and generally in the best sense, with some class- 
ical appurtenances. The academy was essentially an ad- 
vanced school for boys; the high school is as essentially 
coeducational. 

• The courses of the high schools have widened out and 
gone into about everything that can aid one to earn a living. 
There is mental discipline in study that informs the mind 
land applies to life. 

It is interesting to study the first decisive manifestations 
of this high school movement. They came in the West — 
in what was then the West — where there was nothing in 
the way, where democracy was freer than in thoroughly 
settled social conditions, and where the masses were doing 
things on their own account. The movement advanced on 
lines of least resistance, but when forced it accepted the 
gauge of battle, and when it did that it won, or drove a 
mutually advantageous compromise. 

The movement from the beginning and always has been 
strong in the West, — in whatever came to be the West. A 
western village is ashamed to be without a high school. 
The building is the finest and the most conspicuous in the 
settlement. It is so in all of the north central, the moun- 
tain, and the Pacific states. Of course it results in many 
struggling high schools, but in many more which are as 
fine as any in the land. And moreover they will abundantly 
take care of a splendid future. 

The figures concerning the high school movement are 
as interesting as any figures are likely to be. At the turning 
point of the last century there were but eleven high schools 
with progressive courses continuing from two to four years 
and covering advanced studies in foreign languages, mathe- 
^ matics, literature, natural science, and history. In 1860 



THE RISE OF HIGH SCHOOLS 155 

there were 44 of these schools; in 1870, 160; in 1880, 800; 
in 1890, 2526 ; in 1900, 6005. This remarkable growth has 
been decisive in every section of the country, the South by 
no means excepted, but it has at all times been specially 
noteworthy in the Mississippi Valley states. 

The unprecedented growth of our secondary schools has 
created a demand for teachers of advanced work which 
it has been difficult to meet. The graduations from college 
are more than ever before, but high schools want a large 
proportion of men teachers, and the number of thoroughly 
prepared men who want to teach is small. Boys who have 
been taught by women all through the elementary grades 
should at least hear a masculine voice and get things from 
a man's point of view when they get into the high school. 

But the difficulty is rather deeper than that not many 
men incline to teaching. The work of the colleges does 
not so dispose them. Other callings seem more inviting and 
the colleges do but little by way of corrective. The colleges 
do not take much stock in educational theory about the 
professional training of teachers. College managements 
are more worldly wise than they used to be. So they nod 
to this theory in a polite way rather than lose any practical 
advantage by absolutely ignoring it. But such interest 
as most of them take in it comes from prudence rather 
than conviction. And it must be admitted that when a uni- 
versity does establish a separate department upon the the- 
ory that education is a science and teaching a profession, 
unless it makes a separate school with considerable au- 
tonomy of its own, it finds difficulty in securing professors 
who can justify the theory and stir the efforts of ambitious 
men students. Yet it is commonly accepted that one can 
hardly hope to become a successful teacher without deep 
study of educational history, theory, and practice. 

But if one cannot teach without knowing how to teach. 



156 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

he surely cannot teach without knowing the subject he is 
to teach. 

There is no doubt about the need of college-bred men and 
women, with a good proportion of men, who have been 
prepared to teach, for the work of the secondary schools. 
The supply is not sufficient. There is a hiatus in the edu- 
cational system. The academies have rather the better of 
this because of their independent self-control, because of 
their somewhat greater exclusiveness, and because of their 
closer college connections. The high schools are suffering. 
It is time to do something decisive for the teaching profes- 
sion. It is an absurdity to protect the other professions and 
neglect the most important teaching positions. 

The educational system must balance. The work in the 
upper schools is the hope of all the schools below them. 
There must be universal recognition of the worth of schol- 
arship, — not merely of its form or its pretensions, but of 
its juices and its flavor, and of its power to apply itself to 
the real concerns of life. 

This is not a general imputation against the teachers 
of our middle schools. They have met the demands of 
their day. They have carried the schools over a transition 
period in the evolution of a great system. No criticism upon 
them and nothing but compliment for them is intended. 
They brought all that they could get into their work, and it 
was much. They have supplemented it with experience and 
study. Nothing more could be asked of them. But new 
conditions and a new outlook must provide for an opening 
era. 



IV 

TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 

The excellence of any state system of education must 
depend very largely upon the excellence of its academic 
schools. 

If they were to be taken by themselves alone, the aca- 
demic schools would not be as important as the elementary 
schools. Of one hundred pupils in the elementary schools 
about six go to the high schools and one of the six goes to 
college. But the academic schools are not to be separated 
from the rest of the school system. They supply by far the 
greater part of the teachers to, and exert a decisive influ- 
ence upon the instruction in, the elementary schools. They 
are the goal of any intellectual ambition which germinates 
among the children of the elementary schools. Every sys- 
tem of schools needs a system above it to lift it up. Hap- 
pily, the secondary schools have come not only to supple- 
ment the primary schools, but to be an integral part of the 
common school system. There need be no hesitation in 
saying that the main reliance of the elementary schools for 
excellence and progress must be upon them. 

But apart from the elementary school system, they are 
giving a reasonably liberal education, a training in both 
efiiciency and culture, to a steadily increasing number of 
young men and women who do not go to college. They 
are enlarging the opportunity of the masses and increasing 
the power of the thousands. Without any reference to their 
work in preparing students for college, they are quickening 
the energy and adding to the culture of our social, indus- 
trial, commercial, professional, and civic life. 



158 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

If the elementary schools are dependent upon them, the 
colleges and universities most certainly are. Unless the 
colleges articulate with the high schools their work is weak- 
ened. Students who go to college with inadequate or irreg- 
ular preparation -must have unusual intellectual resources, 
or their hopes will be dashed to the ground and their intel- 
lectual lives wrecked. Schools which accept the responsi- 
bility of preparing for college are morally bound to do it 
completely. 

It may well be doubted whether even teachers realize 
how thoroughly our secondary schools are the expression 
of our free and forceful democracy in education. They 
are our best assurance of real opportunity to the masses. 
All of the leading nations of the world have systems of ele- 
mentary schools, and some of them attend to vital things 
in elementary education more completely and uniformly 
than we do. All of them have colleges and universities and 
technical and professional schools. But none of them has 
a universal system of schools connecting the elementary 
schools with the colleges, for none of them tries to make 
it easy for any child of the masses to go to college if he, or 
particularly if she, will. The American high school is dis- 
tinctly an American creation. It did not grow out of the 
needs of the colleges ; it came from below, not above ; it is 
not the product of any exclusiveness. It is the logical out- 
growth of our intellectual progress ; it is the pet instrument 
of the masses; it is the most common and universal and, 
next to the free state university, the noblest expression 
that we have of our fundamental political gospel that all 
men are created with equality of natural rights. 

A recent study of high school conditions in the state of 
New York has developed several rather important surprises. 
The greatest of these is that, judged by results, and by the 
only test we have, — a test which is equally just to all, — 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 159 

the high schools which show the best results are not in the 
cities, but in the larger villages, and that the high schools 
in the smaller villages — often under the same roof as the 
elementary schools — average as much good work in pro- 
portion to students as those in the cities. 

All of the answer papers received by the education de- 
partment in the academic examinations during a given 
school year were separated into three classes : (1) Those 
coming from the cities, (2) those coming from villages of 
5000 or more inhabitants, (3) those from the smaller vil- 
lages. The following table shows in each of these classes, 
(a) the whole number of answer papers written, (6) the 
number given the passing mark entitling them to accep- 
tance by the department, (c) the percentage of papers ac- 
cepted, and (d) the percentage of honor papers, papers 
rated at 90 or above, to accepted papers : — 





In 


In villages of In smaller 




cities 


5000 or more 


villages 


Answer papers written 


84,772 


23,751 


161,073 


Answer papers accepted 


56,741 


16,629 


107,044 


Percentage of accepted to written 








papers 


66.93 


70.01 


66.45 


Percentage of honor papers to ac- 








cepted papers 


17.47 


15.25 


11.01 



The facts show that learning may thrive either in a great 
city or in a country village, either in a large class or a small 
one, either in a fine house or a plain one, if there are spirit 
and purpose, and the needed books and appliances, and, 
above all, if there is a real teacher there. 

Of the 561 academic schools in villages of less than 
5000 inhabitants, 297, or more than half, excelled the state 
average in accepted papers or in honor papers in a 
given examination. The state average was 65.9. There 
were 154 of these schools with an average of 70% or 



160 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

more; 96 with an average of 75% or more; 42 with an 
average of 80% or more, and 15 with an average of 85% 
or more. 

It is not necessary to discuss all of the factors in the case. 
The tributary elementary schools, the physical life and 
intellectual qualities of the students, the absence of dis- 
tracting amusements, work with individual students, and 
the earnestness that is commonly associated with life near 
the soil are all involved in the problem. Books, appara- 
tus, and laboratories constitute very important factors. 
There is sufficient reason for saying that the equipment 
in books and apparatus of New York high schools and 
academies is, by reason of the excellent policy of the state 
followed for a long time, uniformly much stronger than 
that of any other general system of secondary schools in 
the world. The policy in this direction has been so liberal 
as to raise doubts about all that has been bought being 
capable of advantageous use. The decisive factor in the 
problem is inevitably the teaching. 

The carefully developed facts do not warrant any severe 
or general criticism upon the teaching in the secondary 
schools. Though but a minority of the teachers have had 
the preparation which must hereafter be demanded, they 
have in general made the most of themselves and met their 
responsibilities creditably. The schools have multiplied 
rapidly. The demand for completely prepared teachers 
has exceeded the supply. Strong men principals are scarce. 
The industrial activity is ajBfecting the supply of teachers 
for all schools, and particularly for the higher positions 
where the compensation is not commensurate with the 
higher requirements and responsibilities. 

College-trained men are needed at the head of all aca- 
demic schools. How can a school which prepares for col- 
lege do its work without a college man at its head ? How 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 161 

can any school in such a system of schools expect to be as 
good as others in the system without a college man at its 
head ? To be sure, there are an endless number of men 
who have never been to college who know more of things 
very desirable to know than very many who have been to 
college can ever hope to know, but the headship of an aca- 
demic school is a place which demands a man with the 
experience, the discipline, and the ideals of the man who 
has been trained in college. 

Unquestionably the place needs a man. Its conspicuity 
in the community, its relations to the educational activities 
of the state, the masculine qualities desirable in its admin- 
istration, the needs of the boys in the schools, all call for 
a man. There will be women enough in the faculty in any 
event to supply the feminine qualities which are desirable 
in the management of the school. This is not said in igno- 
rance of the fact that women are needed more than men 
in many places in the schools. Nor does it controvert the 
principle that a strong and good woman is better than an 
effeminate man in any place in the schools. Every large 
Work in which many people are associated needs the man- 
agement of men and women working together. If the 
academic schools are to have even that, there must be 
men at their heads. 

Emphasis has been laid upon the qualities and training 
of the principal because the competent and successful man 
in that position ought to effectuate suitable appointments 
throughout the faculty. But it is safe to predict that even- 
tually all of the teaching in the academic schools will be 
done by college-trained men and women. New appointees 
in those schools should be so trained. And with the col- 
leges turning out so many graduates, particularly so many 
women, there is no difficulty about it if the compensation 
is what it ought to be. 



162 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Further statistics from New York state bearing upon 
this subject may be illuminating. 

There are 665 public high schools in the state. Of these, 
69 are in the cities, 35 in villages of 5000 or more inhabi- 
tants, and 561 in the smaller villages. 

The teachers in these schools are classified as follows : — 

College graduates 1824 

Normal school graduates 967 

Holders of state certificates 164 

Holders of other certificates 465 

3420 

In the city high schools: — 

College graduates 1190 

Normal school graduates 238 

Holders of state certificates 84 

Holders of other certificates 257 

1769 

In the village high schools: — 

College graduates 634 

Normal school graduates 729 

Holders of state certificates 80 

Holders of other certificates 208 

1651 

The average salaries of men principals in villages are 
as follows : — 

College graduates $1,104.52 

Normal graduates 897.65 

Holders of state certificates 905.75 

Holders of other certificates 798.36 

The average salaries of women principals in villages 
are as follows : — 

College graduates $916.66 

Normal graduates 763.63 



TEACHING IN THE HIGH SCHOOLS 163 

Holders of state certificates $875.00 

Holders of other certificates 597.00 

The average salaries of other men than principals in 
villages are as follows : — 

College graduates $770.07 

Normal graduates 585.92 

Holders of state certificates 735.60 

Holders of other certificates 705.50 

The average salaries of other women than principals 
in villages are as follows : — 

College graduates $531.97 

Normal graduates 466.76 

Holders of state certificates 547.43 

Holders of other certificates 447.60 

In schools maintaining academic departments, outside 
of the cities, there are 819 teachers who divide their time 
between the academic and elementary grades. 

The average number of teachers to a high school in the 
state is 5.2. In the city high schools it is 25.6. In the village 
high schools it is 2.8. 

The percentage of college graduate and state certificate 
teachers in the city high schools is 72; this percentage in 
the villages is 43. 

The average salary of a man principal in the villages 
is aOTt.ST. 

The average salary of a woman principal in the villages 
is $742.56. 

The average salary of men assistant teachers in the vil- 
lages is $716.95. 

The average salary of women assistants in the villages 
is $490.43. 

The salaries of the teachers in the high schools are, 
speaking generally, seriously inadequate to the demands 



164 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of the service. They are unjust to the teachers now em- 
ployed . They do not give sufficient encouragement to remain 
in and advance in the profession. They are insufficient to at- 
tract the most forceful characters and to induce the liberal 
preparation which the service demands. There are hun- 
dreds of college graduates, and others, with years of teach- 
ing experience who have spent from fourteen to eighteen 
years and much money in preparation, who are receiving 
compensation which dwarfs the schools and hinders the 
advance which the common interests demand that they 
shall make. If the men and women who are members of 
boards of education would be of real service to their peo- 
ple, let them exact the highest competency in the high 
schools, and give efficient teachers a compensation which 
will attract them. 

The pertinent facts which have been used here have 
come to the surface in the state of New York, but there 
is reason enough to believe that they illustrate situations 
which are common in other states, and that in general the 
facts point to the same conclusions. 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 

By the "common schools," splendid and meaningful old 
term that it is, is meant schools that are wholly supported 
and managed by the people, wholly free from partisanship 
or sectarianism, and doing the work, either primary or 
secondary, adaptable to children under the age when they 
may be deemed to be fairly safe in living away from home. 
A leading university question relating to these common 
schools has to do with the length of the courses in the col- 
leges and below. The older and statelier universities used 
to receive students in their professional schools without any 
college training whatever ; now they are beginning to exact 
a college degree. Thirty years ago a medical course at the 
best university medical schools in the country covered a 
working period of from eight to twelve months, whereas a 
course now requires from twenty-four to thirty-six months 
distributed through four years. But that is not all. In these 
schools the implication is very common that if one really 
expects to be thoroughly equipped for the medical profes- 
sion he must return and take a year or two of graduate 
work. And even beyond that looms up the rather definite 
assurance that complete professional expertness lies in the 
student's being capable of winning an appointment as 
interne at a great city hospital, and finally of gaining the 
great opportunity of working with the old doctors for a 
couple of years more. Under this process, the danger that 
the student may die before he is fully qualified to save 
another from dying, becomes a fact which, if it is to have 
any general application, must be reckoned with. 



166 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Out of this grade of professional work are likely to issue 
the most distinctive scientific achievements and the most 
beneficent service to human kind. If universities can sus- 
tain professional schools upon this plane, so much the more 
honor to them. 

But this length of time in preparation for life work is very 
commonly regarded as unduly long. Allowing eight years 
for the elementary school, four for the secondary school, 
four for the college course, and four for the professional 
course, it delays the real beginning of work until one is from 
twenty-six to thirty years of age. Certainly all universities 
cannot sustain that. What is to be done.'' 

It is frequently suggested that the college course leading 
to the A. B. degree be shortened. It is said that this course 
may be reduced to three years without any diminution of 
the work heretofore required. It is quite possible that the 
greater eflficiency of the secondary schools tributary to 
some colleges and universities may make this practicable 
with them. Where this is so, who shall object ? If some 
universities can take that attitude and sustain it, it may 
be said again, honor to them. 

But all universities cannot do that. Perhaps such as try 
it may not succeed in or may suffer for it. That is their 
matter. They are of age, and of sound mind and memory 
still, and it is a free country. Let them try it. The uni- 
versities which are trying it are foremost in America, 
guided by men who are the most experienced and trusted 
leaders in American education. If they succeed, as there 
is reason to believe they will, their move will mark a dis- 
tinct advance in the standards of professional learning 
without sacrificing anything preliminary thereto, or dis- 
arranging the educational system below them. 

But certain it is that all universities cannot do this. 
The others cannot think of professional courses any shorter 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 167 

or less thorough than the best. And they have sufficient 
reason to fear that they cannot sustain four-year profes- 
sional courses on the basis of a college degree for entrance, 
or that they cannot get students competent to do the work 
heretofore required for the degree, and thus necessary to 
maintain its standing, in three years. What are they to do ? 
In some instances they propose to let the college course 
be crowded out altogether, or to make a sort of college of 
the secondary school by extending its course from four 
years to six- 
All of these propositions have not come from the same 
source. The authors of one would not sustain another, and 
they had the right to propose one without being held re- 
sponsible for another. But all have come from knocking 
down the first brick. One has led to another. It is to be 
hoped that the colleges of America are not to be suppressed 
through a resolution in a university conference, and the 
great common school system, primary and secondary, is 
not to be shuffled in the game of university preeminence. 
The A. B. degree represents a cherished ideal in America, 
and a very common sentiment among the educated men 
and women of the country is outraged at any suggestion 
of its sacrifice. It is being steadfastly maintained and up- 
held by many small colleges of moderate means without 
large equipment. Many of these colleges of slender endow- 
ments have a splendid history, for they have given trend 
and fibre to American scholarship through all the forma- 
tive period of the Republic. The great universities have 
come to stay, but that is no reason why the colleges shall go. 
The particular work which they have done needs to be done 
as much as it ever did, and they can do it as well as they 
ever did. Surely there is educational work enough for all. 
They are to be revered and honored for what they have 
done. Their affectionate children will not permit them 



168 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to be suppressed, and the very common sympathy and 
support of educated opinion in the country will be with 
them. It is the poorest kind of educational policy to aid or 
consent to their overthrow. It is abhorrent to think of their 
sacrifice because of university competition. 

But this is not all that is to be said if these new schemes 
are to be urged with any seriousness. A recent report of the 
United States commissioner of education shows that of the 
entire attendance upon American schools, public and pri- 
vate, elementary, secondary, collegiate, normal, law, medi- 
cal, theological, technological, and all the rest, 93.31 per 
cent were in the elementary schools, 5.17 per cent in the sec- 
ondary schools, and 1.52 per cent in all the rest put together. 

Observe the great step there from the elementary school 
to the high school. Of every hundred youth who come into 
any American school, ninety-four never go beyond the ele- 
mentary school. It is said that they may do in six years all 
the work they now do in eight. That has not been proved. 
It cannot be proved. Men who say that base their opinion 
upon children from favored homes, in little hot-house 
schools, taught by the experts developed in a university. 
Of the mass it is not true. Of course, a small number 
of children could do the ordinary work of our elementary 
schools in six years. Why not let such do it and go on? 
Why not fix administrative machinery so as to give the few 
the chance which belongs to them.? Or, indeed, why not 
have some more work in the elementary schools, some 
vocational work, or some other device for making sure that 
we keep all who are not going to the high schools busy 
for the eight years, and perhaps for prolonging the school 
life of some of the 94 per cent, who will cease going to 
school altogether when they leave the elementary schools ? 
Why shorten the work and lessen the chance of nine tenths 
of all who ever come into the schools at all? 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 169 

Possibly there is less ground for energy of protest against 
lengthening the work of the secondary schools than for 
shortening that of the elementary schools, but valid objec- 
tions to it are not wanting. The attendance upon the sec- 
ondary schools is not likely to be increased by lengthening 
the course. Many parents in moderate circumstances 
are brave enough to face a four-year course who would 
feel a six-year course too long for them. Is the attendance 
upon the colleges likely to be enlarged by making a uni- 
form secondary course of six years ? Would there be any 
greater unity in the educational system or any less con- 
fusion in the colleges with both four-year and six-year 
high schools ? With the present arrangement, a boy who 
goes to college does not naturally go before he is eighteen. 
Should he be delayed beyond that time ? By the time a boy 
is eighteen it is time he had some severance from his par- 
ents ; a normal boy knows enough to take it by that time. 
He will mature and broaden more rapidly and strongly by 
going away from home. If he is to go to college at all, he 
should go by that time. And he never " goes to college " 
until he goes away from home. If he is not to go to college, 
it is high time at eighteen that he should go to work. 

Again, public high schools on the plane now established, 
with such natural improvement in accommodations and 
equipment as time and experience will bring, go about to 
the limit of cost which it is good policy for the educationists 
of the country to insist on imposing upon local communi- 
ties. The people have supported the public high school 
movement very heroically. It may well be doubted whether 
it is good educational policy to demand more work of the 
high schools under all the circumstances of their support 
and administration, whether they are looked upon as fit- 
ting schools for colleges or not. 

Yet, again, it may be well to recall that the high schools 



170 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

are not the property of the universities. For tone and fibre, 
and all the uplifting and guiding influences, they are 
dependent upon the work of the universities; they need 
the aid of the higher learning to help them to greater pro- 
ficiency ; and it assuredly would be better for them and for 
the universities if they saw this more clearly than they do ; 
but neither the American elementary nor secondary schools 
are in any sense the creation of the universities. They are 
both the products of our free democracy. The public free 
school, in its inception and its development, expressed 
no purpose of the college, and had nothing to do with 
supplying students to the college in the formative periods 
of our social and educational organizations. Indeed, it is 
not going too far to say that the free public school was the 
answer and the protest against the sectarianism and the 
exclusiveness for which the early American college stood. 
And this is no more true of the free elementary than of the 
free secondary school. Even fifty years ago only a com- 
paratively small number of young men from the most in- 
telligent and best-to-do families went to college, and they 
went up through the private schools and academies ; and 
eveiy time a high school was developed in the neighbor- 
hood of a private school or academy it was against such 
vigorous opposition as the private institution could gather, 
and such incredulity, skepticism, and active hostility as the 
colleges to which the academy was tributary could exert. , 
The contest was widespread and often exceedingly bitter. 
But no one will be courageous enough to say that the high 
schools, however much they have been aided by, have been 
the product of, the universities. 

The common schools, primary and secondary, are the 
offspring of American life and conditions. They flow out 
of those conditions as naturally as the Mississippi flows 
from the Minnesota lakes. No element in our Republic 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 171 

caused them, and none could stop them, and none can 
govern them. They are the expression of national life, the 
instruments of national purposes, unprecedented in the 
world. They have come to their present form and plan 
through the self-conscious power, the intellectual foresight, 
the genuine heart impulses of our steadily unfolding and 
sturdily strengthening democratic life. They rest upon not 
a little formal law, and upon at least one great govern- 
mental power which goes down quite as deeply into the 
ground upon which the structure of government rests 
as any other power found in our constitutions. They are 
safeguarded by common sentiment and by settled usage, 
which are quite as steadfast as laws and constitutions. 

Of course the common schools are to be changed. They 
will be changed slowly, conservatively, when it is clearly 
to the advantage of the common schools that they shall be. 
They will never be much changed when the advantage is 
speculative. When changed it will be out of full expe- 
rience, through the ripened sentiment of the people, by 
the activity of officials and boards responsible for their 
efficiency, through the legislatures which alone have sov- 
ereign educational power. One thing seems very certain. 
Their terms are not likely to be made shorter that the 
terms in law schools and medical schools may be made 
longer. 

No one can object that some of the universities are de- 
veloping great scientific and professional schools. On the 
contrary, there is a very common national pride in them. 
Such youth as can afford the time and the money ought to 
take advantage of them. Those schools will go ahead and 
break out new roads and gain the very mountain peaks 
of professional eminence ; but not at the surrender of cher- 
ished ideals; surely not at the cost of a balanced educa- 
tional system, nor at the expense of the largest educational 



172 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

opportunity for the ninety-and-nine who go no further than 
the common schools. 

And it seems quite possible for a small number of these 
great professional schools to go all the lengths they desire, 
without suppressing any other educational enterprise, or 
without attempting to recast in a day or two a school sys- 
tem which has been a century in the growing. And it seems 
quite probable that the greater number of universities can- 
not do that, and therefore that they ought to be complacent 
about not doing it. 

It is a false assumption that all universities should do 
the same thing in conditions which are very unlike. The 
tendency to imitate and the inability to discriminate about 
what should be imitated is a very great weakness in Ameri- 
can education. Some universities dare not do what they 
propose unless all universities will do the same thing at 
the same time. It is well that the requirements and the 
offerings and the length of courses of each shall follow 
the outlook and be limited only by its own resources and 
bravery. It is more desirable that each university shall 
serve its constituency, keeping a little ahead of and yet in 
touch with its people, than it is that all do just the same 
things and aim at precisely the same ends. Each should 
have the sense and the courage of its own situations. 

No subject lays more claim to cautious consideration by 
American universities than the influence of those univer- 
sities upon the kind of work laid out and the quality of the 
teaching done in the lower and the middle schools. And 
there are few subjects with which universities find it more 
difficult to deal in satisfactory and helpful ways. 

The science of education is a new science. Some uni- 
versity men are pursuing it carefully and with important 
results. Of these, more find interest in the psychological 
than the pedagogical side of it, and even in psychology they 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 173 

find more fascination in abnormal than in normal intel- 
lectual processes. This is natural enough in the research 
work of a university, but it is the least helpful to the work 
and the teaching of the lower schools. But there are more 
university teachers who have no time for, or no interest in, 
a science of education than there are who are helping it. 
There are not a few who repudiate it altogether. Like other 
institutions, universities do not readily break from the 
usages and understandings they have commonly followed. 
Universities have not been accustomed to bend their backs 
to lift up the schools below. Indeed, they have hardly been 
used to much association with other institutions of equal 
grade or of lower grade in an educational system. The tra- 
ditional tendencies -of universities have been toward in- 
dependence and exclusiveness. The diflSculty of their 
teachers in so expressing themselves that they may be 
understood by the common people has only been excelled 
by their inability to understand the thought and outlook 
of the masses. Many university teachers are as uncon- 
scious of what the people are thinking as the people are 
ignorant of what the university teachers are doing. It has 
remained for the developing plans of our American edu- 
cational system to change this. There was but little move 
in this direction even in America until the universality and 
efficiency of the common schools made it rather obvious 
that universities must expect the students most vital to 
their life from this source, or contemplate the alternative 
of lacking students; nor until the marvelous growth of 
the state universities had given adequate emphasis to the 
protest of our democratic society against the exclusiveness 
of attitude and the narrowness and one-sidedness of in- 
struction prevalent even in American colleges and univer- 
sities. But the demonstration has been sufficiently com- 
plete and apparently very well comprehended. They are all 



174 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ready enough now to do and dare for the common schools. 
The old attitude was sincere and the new one is genuine, 
if not easy. And if universities are as very clumsy in help- 
ing the lower schools, as a young father might well be in 
snuggling his firstborn to his heart, or as a sergeant of po- 
lice might be in cuddling a foundling, there ought not to 
be impatience so long as there is evidence of considerable 
appreciation of what needs to be, and a movement of ade- 
quate power and good intentions on correct lines. 

The whole plan of the universities — the kind of work 
and method of procedure, the ways of teaching, the inde- 
pendent and self-dependent life of the students, the feeling 
and outlook of the whole university body — is a radical 
departure from that of the schools below. This, it must 
be admitted, really unfits some men for usefulness in the 
world or helpfulness to the schools below. 

Again, some university men lose their heads through 
their freedom. They go floating around in the upper ether, 
often in a kind of irresponsible intellectual intoxication. 
Some of them even soar the higher and dissipate the more 
recklessly because only fool things get into the newspapers 
and nothing is so idiotic as to be barred out. But the pri- 
mary and the secondary schools have to rest upon the earth, 
and have to respond to very matter-of-fact people who are 
guided by considerations not ordinarily exploited in the 
newspapers. To find a way to sustain free thinking and 
limit fool talk, to protect one in his academic liberty and 
yet keep him anchored to the verities of life, is a problem 
of higher education which surely has a very vital bearing 
upon the helpfulness of universities to a general system 
of education. 

Nevertheless, universities are not new developments. 
They are the products of the best thinking and the highest 
purposes of the world through a thousand years. They 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 175 

have come to their present estate through a long, long pro- 
cess of accumulation, of opposition and ridicule, of aspi- 
ration and discussion, of giving and doing and sacrificing, 
which comprise the finest heroisms in all the world. No 
ruthless or unfriendly hand shall assail them. As Ran- 
dolph said of Virginia, " No one shall criticise her but me." 
The plan and work and ideals of the universities change, 
but marked change in the thought and policies of univer- 
sities is a laborious process, and must proceed slowly. Un- 
der all the circumstances, the American university advance 
is most surprising. In all the intellectual development of 
the world there have been no such changes in the work 
and the ideals of advanced education as in the last genera- 
tion have been forced upon American colleges by the swell- 
ing and throbbing impulses of our spontaneous national 
life. But great as those changes have been, there is suffi- 
cient reason for believing that American universities will 
go still farther in response to popular demands, and will 
be much more serviceable in coalescing a great national 
system of education in the years to come than in the years 
that are gone. 

What and how much may the American public expect 
from American universities in making the best practicable 
educational system ? The question is difficult to answer, 
but in part it may be expected that they will realize that 
there is a science of education and pursue it ; that they will 
not assume that this may be done very effectually in a 
laboratory of experimental psychology alone, nor yet in 
a little school of pupils from favored homes who pay tuition 
alone, nor yet again by theorists who have little of the feel- 
ings and know little of the spirit which centres in the com- 
mon schools; but rather in the ordinary schools of the 
country, and with knowledge that those schools are the 
people's schools, are not to be overhauled every time 



176 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

a student of education grows a new convolution, but 
improved cautiously, only by innovations which have 
passed the stage of doubtful experiment and are able to 
command a very substantial public approval; and also 
that they will realize that the problem is exceedingly large 
because of very wide application, and is nothing short of 
welding together all kinds of people in a common purpose 
to raise the level of national intelligence and virtue. 

It may be expected that college teachers will mingle 
more with the lower schools, gaining a truer understanding 
of their purposes and their difficulties, realizing, what the 
public sees, that one may be very expert in one thing and 
only slightly expert in other things, and that a great expert 
is in quite as dire peril as any one else when he dabbles in 
other subjects than the one he possesses. 

University teachers are gathered from the great schools 
of the world. Some of the greatest have never been in our 
common schools, and it must be admitted that some who 
have been in them have been out of them so long, and have 
gone through so much in the meantime, that they have only 
a very inadequate conception of the intricacies of common 
school life. If the common schools are to be the large 
source of supply to the universities, the process of assimi- 
lation must lead more university men to understand the 
limitations which are upon the common schools and to 
reahze that it may not be well to exact some things of 
them, or to burden a community beyond the limit. It is 
likely, too, that more importance will be attached to the 
exactness of the teaching than to the number of things done 
in preparation for college work ; that there will be a more 
generous recognition of the claims of other subjects than 
their own ; that they will see a larger value in a balanced 
system of education which holds out the fair chance to the 
large percentage of pupils who are not going to college 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 177 

as well as to the relatively small number who are ; and that 
they will get where they can stand for the common oppor- 
tunity for all, not as a mere form, or in a patronizing way, 
but with genuine enthusiasm, because they will see that 
a very large percentage of the captains of the world are 
men of the crowd who have been able to make the most 
of their chance. The smooth and continuous road from 
the kindergarten to the university is an admirable thing, 
but there will have to be places upon it where the many 
who must, or who wish, may leave it and go to work with- 
out being humiliated, or unfitted for the life they are to 
lead. 

The activities for which the universities stand have a 
weighty influence upon the lower and the middle schools. 
Until our day, the universities have mainly stood for liter- 
ary culture, for philosophical discussion, and for a little 
research in the natural sciences. They have just fairly 
begun to investigate the industries of the people and 
broadly to uplift the intellectual and social life of the mul- 
titude through the applications of science to work. This 
new tendency has already engaged popular interest and 
enthusiasm. It is already bringing popular support to, 
and creating popular demands upon, the universities. It 
is inevitably destined to go much further, and it will cer- 
tainly relate to the instruction in the earlier schools. The 
trend of those schools, their ideals of the educated man, 
will not lead inevitably to the library or to the old-time 
learned professions, but as well to the producing, trans- 
porting, manufacturing, building, and commercial indus- 
tries. There may even be danger of this thing going too 
far. It is for the universities to stand for learning in any 
field, to repel all that is not scientific and not true, and 
above all, to keep all the schools of the country bound 
together in purposeful accord, and moving safely to the 



178 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

accomplishment of the national ideals. The destiny of our 
democracy is wrapped up in integrity, in mental acumen, 
in manual industry, in living by work more than by wits, 
in international generosity and straightforwardness. The 
schools, high and low, must make for these great ends, and 
the universities must place themselves on stronger ground 
to help all the schools to realize them. 

There will surely be more concern to avoid any weaken- 
ing of the schools below by attracting their pupils before 
they have completed all the work which the elementary and 
secondary schools can give them. It deals an irreparable 
injury to those schools. It wrongs the pupil, humiliates 
the college, and weakens the whole educational system. 

It may confidently be expected that the colleges and the 
universities will do much more than they are doing to pre- 
pare teachers for the secondary schools. There has been 
a good deal of a hiatus in our educational system right here. 
Teachers for the elementary schools are being very well 
prepared at the state normals and in the city normal train- 
ing schools, but in very insufiicient numbers. The breadth 
of the work in the normals is not equal to the demands 
of the secondary schools. On the other hand, the univer- 
sities have given only inadequate attention to the prepara- 
tion of teachers. Public sentiment would not sustain the 
expense involved in broadening the curriculum at the 
normals so as to mieet the needs of the secondary schools, 
at least until the claims of the primary schools are more 
fully met. And the secondary schools are not going to be 
content with teachers without university training. The 
universities must meet the situation which the rapidly 
growing high schools have forced. It may be done without 
impinging upon the domain of the normals. Indeed, it 
may be best done by not imitating the normal plans. The 
practice school is well placed in the plan of the normal 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 179 

school : it has very little place in the plan of the university. 
Because of situation, the experimental school of a normal 
makes some approach to an ordinary common school; 
that of a university is much more exceptional. Methods 
are of much moment in an elementary school, but of less 
importance in a secondary school, and of little significance 
beyond that. The subject-matter pursued in a university, 
coupled with the substantial study of the science of educa- 
tion, comprises a better preparation for teaching in the 
middle schools than is to be gained by much emphasis and 
drill upon methods. But the great educational system of the 
country must be the laboratory of the university depart- 
ment of education. A university college for the training 
of teachers of all grades stands on middle ground, but it will 
fall short if its most useful laboratory is not in the common 
schools. 

The universities are anxious to be of all possible help 
to the schools below. Of course they are not agreed upon 
details, but they have purposes which are common, and 
in recent years they have grown in fraternal regard and in 
cooperative effectiveness. They may seem a little clumsy 
in the face of duties universities never dreamed of before, 
but, like everything else in this country, they are adaptable, 
and they will adjust themselves to the conditions and 
shoulder the responsibilities." Out of it all will come an 
educational system with greater solidarity, marked by 
more exactness of organization and more scientific arrange- 
ment of work, and moving upon a higher plane. 

There is another great subject in this connection which 
should not be overlooked, and that is, the moral influence 
of the universities upon their own students and upon the 
other schools. The country has the clear right to expect 
that the universities shall exert a distinctly moral, steady- 
ing, and uplifting influence upon the educational system. 



180 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

That they are leading the purely intellectual development 
of the country very thoroughly will hardly be questioned 
in any quarter. But there are many good people who think 
that religion should be taught in the common schools and 
that all of our young men and women should be trained in 
what are called the Christian colleges. There are those 
who would put the burden of occasional waves of irrespon- 
sible conduct, disorder, and crime upon the schools moving 
under the leadership of the universities. It may well be 
questioned whether there is warrant for the thought that 
the universities are not scoring up to the measure of their 
opportunities and their responsibilities in generating spir- 
itual life and developing moral character among their stu- 
dents and in the lower schools and in the nation. 

A university is not a show affair ; it is not a specially 
dressed company of young people on their good behavior 
for an hour. It is a large crowd of real men and women in 
natural life. They have real ambitions and real passions. 
They are not under much restraint. Many are without 
restraint for the first time in their lives. Often they abuse 
their freedom ; frequently they do things under the influence 
of others which they would not do alone. 

The general influences of a university make for versatil- 
ity and resourcefulness, and stimulate the best ambitions 
and purposes. The life is democratic and the talk free. 
Men are sized up quickly. Pretense and indirection do 
not go. There is no other free life in the world in which 
integrity and industry and generosity are so speedily and 
warmly recognized, or in which spuriousness or stupidity 
carries one so swiftly to the deeps. The sentiment of the 
college community is as inexorable as the semester exami- 
nation. This influence upon the individual is marked; 

There is, ordinarily, a very high average, both in quan- 
tity and quality, of spiritual life in the university. If religion 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 181 

is a matter of living and of thinking rather than of preach- 
ing and parading, there is more of it under the roofs of a 
university than in any other miscellaneous assembly gath- 
ered from the respectable people of the earth. Here, too, 
the discussion is free, and youths who would hardly express 
their heart-life under other circumstances find themselves 
talking about matters that relate to it. Expression pro- 
motes growth. Cant is not taken seriously. Even religious 
dyspeptics sometimes have the kinks shaken out of them. 
Sectarianism is respected, but not accepted as the ground- 
work of religion. Creeds written in mediaeval times and 
held too sacred to be analyzed or discussed are passed with 
more deference for their age than acknowledgment of their 
right to bind. And this does not promote free thinking, 
if by that is meant illogical thinking, or any thinking which 
does not accord with the common experiences of mankind 
and the truths which the progress of human knowledge has 
unlocked. All this makes the average of heart-life, as well 
as of mind-life, in a university exceptionally broad, un- 
confined, and true. 

There are some special temptations in university life, 
arising out of the fraternal relations which are very warm 
among students, and out of the loyal purpose to support 
a "varsity" team in an intercollegiate contest; and some- 
times these temptations are given too much opportunity 
by the very common, but inadequate, plan upon which a 
university is governed, or upon which a university crowd is 
left without government. 

There is not much government in a university. The 
assumption is common, and it is justified, that when stu- 
dents come to college they are men and women grown, 
and able to govern themselves. If one cannot do that with 
such aid as can be given him, he should be sent home. 
It is convenient for college presidents to know nothing 



182 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

of things which may be going on, but if the things spring 
from or lead to corruption, may imperil others, or stain 
the name of an institution, it is weak or vicious to know, or 
to assume to know, nothing of them. The theory of the Ger- 
man universities, that all they have to do is to teach students 
without any reference to their morals, cannot widely obtain 
in America, for it is to be feared that the serious pursuit of 
study is not yet as uniform here as there, and moreover, 
the university purpose in America is the making of men 
even more than the making of scholars. It is well not to 
meddle with the ordinary plans and ways of young people, 
but it is well to go with them in doing things so far as you 
are welcome, whether you are specially interested or not. 
On the other hand, it is a real satisfaction to the over- 
whelming number of young people, and it is a genuine 
public service, if some things are suppressed at the incipient 
stages by a power which is authoritative and not sleeping. 

A saloon and a university have nothing in common, 
and if any student is uncertain about that he should be 
required to elect the one or the other. Drunkenness is a 
vice not permissible in the least measure in a university 
society. It is hard to keep university athletics straight and 
clean; and when success in great intercollegiate contests 
may be gained by letting corruption in, there is a tempta- 
tion menacing university boys which calls for the big club 
of university authority. A college president with a benig- 
nant countenance and a meek and mild eye says that betting 
on athletic games ought to be discouraged. Of course it 
should. It is no better than betting on a horse-race; it 
undermines and overthrows character. It ought to be 
discouraged so vigorously that it will take to the swamps 
and know enough to keep out of a university. Boys are to 
have such safeguards and helps as may be given them. 

With a little more courage and energy of university action 



COMMON SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES 183 

against the evils which are the special menace of the weaker 
heads through the circumstances of university life, there is 
not much to be desired in the way of influences which com- 
bine for the upbuilding of well-rounded men and women 
in the universities of the country. 

The answer to the question, " Are the universities scor- 
ing up to their moral possibilities?" must, of course, be, 
that they are human institutions, and that all such come 
short of their ideals, but that the prevailing conditions are 
quite as favorable as could be expected at this early time 
in the development of our educational system; that the 
free life vital to the growth of self-reliant men is remark- 
ably free from excesses, and that moral influences combine 
admirably in the great universities to develop resourceful 
and balanced character and to train for useful lives. 

The interests of American education demand closer rela- 
tions between the public schools — elementary and second- 
ary — and the colleges and universities. Scientific methods 
and liberal culture must be carried down into the lower and 
middle schools in larger measure than has yet been done. 
College men and women will have to do it. But they will 
have to do it in a broad-minded way. They must not sup- 
pose that all in the lower schools must go to college or lose 
their birthright. The educational system of the country 
must be a balanced system, holding out the utmost of op- 
portunity to every one, while promoting the integrity, the 
industry, and the scientific and literary progress of the 
nation. 



Ill 

THE COLLEGE AND THE 
UNIVERSITY 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 

The world sees, if willing to see, a new type of university 
in this country in the last half century. It is worth while to 
inquire how it has come to be, and what are the features 
which distinguish it. 

All of the older social systems of the world, no matter 
how advanced in political philosophy or in the arts and 
sciences of civilization, have shown a distinct cleavage 
between the upper and the nether classes. The names of 
things have been different in different countries and the 
things themselves have had all manner of forms and color- 
ings, but the fact has been wellnigh universal that there 
have been two great classes, and that a small higher class 
has ruled a much larger lower class. As generally as this 
has been true, the universities have been the creations, and 
have reflected the outlook and executed the purposes of the 
higher class. The higher class has never been anxiously 
concerned about widely diffusing a universal learning. 
The change is in the interests of the masses, and relates to 
their concerns, and has come through the fact that in this 
country the larger class is having much to say about it. 

Until in our country, and practically in our time, the 
university has stood for some manner of exclusiveness. 
It may have been for a monarch and what he implies ; 
it may have been for a more or less constitutional state ; 
it may have been for a church ; it may have been for a 
profession or a guild : never, until now, has it stood for all 
learning and for all the people. 

This was almost as true of early American as of foreign 



188 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

colleges or universities. We too often forget — if, indeed, 
we have ever realized — that our American democracy, 
with its great elements of toleration, equality before the 
law, no special privileges, and with its public institutions 
of equal service to all, did not at once come full-fledged 
into the world by the migration across the sea of a few 
thousand people of well-settled notions. The common 
thought and the social and institutional life of the Old 
World persisted in the New. Harvard, William and Mary, 
Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Pennsylvania, Rutgers, Brown, 
Dartmouth, all stood at first for aristocracy in the state, 
for denominationalism in religion, and for a learning which 
was exclusively culturing and professional. They never 
dreamed of uplifting the common people or of applying 
scientific research to the industries of the country until new 
political conditions gave the plain people their opportunity. 
It does not signify any lack of appreciation of the great 
qualities which the early settlers brought to this country, 
to say that the dominant and distinguishing thought of the 
nation has come from the compounding of a new nation 
out of pretty nearly all kinds of people in the world. The 
very necessities of the situation have broken down all 
general distinctions between classes, and brought forth a 
national political philosophy with a universal freedom of 
initiative and a popular efficiency in consummation which 
the world has never seen before. It is this which has made 
a new manner of university. It has remodeled the earlier 
universities, and it has brought very quickly into vigorous 
life many powerful institutions which stand for the uni- 
versal purpose to promote the universal good. Some of 
them have resulted from the benefactions of a man of 
wealth, some from the leadership of a great executive 
and the work and love of a multitude of others who had 
little besides work and love to give, and some through 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 189 

the popular determination working through the political 
machinery of the state. But all have had to appeal to a 
constituency which was wider than any class, or sect, 
or party, or lose in the race for efficiency, renown, and 
usefulness, and such as have been able to meet the needs 
of such a constituency have found overwhelming support 
and response to their ability to do it. 

It is interesting to see that the university development 
has been strongest where our democracy has been the 
freest. As new states were settled to the westward by a 
people who lacked little in moral purpose and nothing in 
initiative or in courage, they not only took good care of 
an elementary school system, but commonly provided 
for a state university in their new constitutions. The older 
states could not do that when they were organized because 
neither legal opportunity, nor political philosophy, nor 
educational theory, nor the force of popular initiative was 
up to the point of doing it at that time. And the lead in 
freedom and in force of popular initiative which the newer 
states gained from the fullness of their opportunity, they 
seem likely to hold. They are certainly diffusing the higher 
learning more completely among all the people without 
regard to heredity or wealth than any other people in the 
world. They have established proprietorship in a univer- 
sal school system of sixteen grades, beginning with the 
kindergarten and continuing along a smooth and unbroken 
road up to and through the university, which is unique in 
the history of education. They see, as those in the East do 
not see, that the logical educational result of our funda- 
mental political theory leads to a university so free at least 
that no one who is prepared for it, and aspires to it, shall 
fail to reach it only because he lacks the money to pay the 
cost. The natural outworking of our political philosophy 
makes it certain that this ideal will obtain in the course of 



190 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

time wherever the presence of the flag of the Union deter- 
mines the educational policy of the people. 

When it was settled that we were to have a public high 
school system all over this country, it was practically set- 
tled that we should have a public university system as 
well. One thing in intellectual evolution and educational 
opportunity accomplished in America, another thing, and 
a higher thing, will follow almost as a matter of course. 

The building of public high schools made it certain that 
the colleges already established would have to forego much 
of their exclusiveness, and that there would be new colleges 
and groups of colleges in which the control would not be 
with any class. 

The fundamental political philosophy and the deliberate 
democratic purpose of this country are opposed to the edu- 
cational exclusiveness in other lands. It is not that any one 
is against all the exclusiveness that anybody wants in his 
private or family life ; it is a matter of temperament, of con- 
geniality, of experience, and of taste, and in personal affairs 
these are to have their way ; but the settled purpose of the 
country will have no barriers in education, — at least so far 
as the common wealth and the common political power 
may be used to afford educational opportunities to all. 

Happily, the high school movement in America has 
proved to be a great disorganizer of classes, as well as a 
great help to the diffusion of higher learning. It has made 
men and women of all classes know one another better and 
regard one another more. It has gained and retained the 
interest of many of quick mentality, marked business 
success, and newly acquired wealth in popular education. 
It has been the secret spring of many a great gift to a uni- 
versity, and of much munificence for the common good. 

And, whatever else it has done, it has created an over- 
whelming influence for the development of universities 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 191 

and for determining the essential features of new univer- 
sities in America. There was reason for the earliest and 
most decisive manifestation of this movement in the newer 
states. There were no old-line academies and colleges there 
to stand in the way of it. The settlers were of the finest 
New York and New England stock ; they knew about the 
very best in education. The parents were ready to lay 
down their all, even their lives, for their children; and 
they had a clear field. Of course, with such a people the 
schoolhouse became the most conspicuous building in the 
pioneer village, and of course a little "college" sprang up 
in every considerable town. Of course, again, with such a 
people the public high school had its quickest and perhaps 
its most luxuriant development. The sooner the high 
school became a fact, the sooner higher education became 
a passion. When the federal land grants were made to 
higher education in all the states, right at the darkest hour 
in the Civil War, the eastern states hardly knew about them 
at all, and have never made more than perfunctory and 
indifferent use of them, while the western states have seized 
them with avidity, put them to their utmost possibilities, 
and added to them from ten to an hundredfold. 

And these federal land grants in themselves have had 
much to do in fixing the predominant type of university 
in America. With the complete recognition of the principle 
that it is within the functions of a democratic state to do — 
or to delegate the legal power to do — whatsoever the 
people want to do for learning, and with general education 
boards with millions at their disposal every year for the 
higher institutions, it is not difiicult to see that the colleges 
and universities in America which will endure will minister 
to all the people, without reference to their means, and will 
promote every phase of honorable endeavor without regard 
to class or station. 



192 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Let it not be inferred that the typical American univer- 
sity is, or is to be, the poor man's university. It is not to 
be burdened with any qualifying adjectives. It is to be the 
rich man's and the poor man's alike. Its strength is, and 
is to be, in the fact that it is representative of the common 
life. It is to be no more exclusive than the Constitution of 
the country is exclusive, save upon the one point of ability 
to do its work. It brings rich and poor, men and women, 
together upon the basis of advanced scholarship, and it 
gives intellect an opportunity which is distinctly higher 
and nobler than any that can follow the mere accidents 
of birth or the mere incidents of life. 

No university can be a real or an effective American uni- 
versity and follow the exclusive educational ideals of other 
countries and other times. A new nation has been com- 
pounded in this country out of people from all social, in- 
dustrial, political, and moral conditions in the world. That 
nation is working out its own salvation. It is doing it safely 
and effectually upon lines that are peculiar to itself. The 
net result will be the freest and the finest uplift to the in- 
tellectual and moral state of men and women that the 
world has ever seen. This thing is not only going through 
this nation, but, largely through the instrumentality of 
this nation, it is going through the world. It must, of 
necessity, create instrumentalities which are peculiarly its 
own. Above all, its educational institutions of the first 
rank, which must regulate the ebb and flow of the nation's 
best and truest thought, cannot be limited by ideals which 
had reached their zenith before our nation was born and 
before our political science had begun to make its revolu- 
tionary impressions upon the thinking and the destiny of 
mankind. America cannot be limited by conditions which 
prevail at this time in other nations and their institutions. 
Without, by any means, descending to the low level of 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 193 

declaring that things in this country are better than things 
in other countries only because they are in this country, 
and cheerfully recognizing the vastness of the knowledge 
yet to be gained from other lands, it may yet be asserted, 
in words that will leave little to be misunderstood, that 
our universities cannot follow the British university, with 
its narrow, purely classical and purely English scholar- 
ship, which is studiously prevented from being broadened 
by that fatuous policy of the ruling classes which stubbornly 
refuses the organization of all secondary schools through 
which the only people who can broaden it may come to the 
universities at all. Neither is the scheme of the French uni- 
versities acceptable, overbalanced as they are with the 
mechanical and the imaginative, and dominated by the 
martial feeling and the military organization of a people 
who need the opportunity of thinking freely above all other 
things. Nor is the German university to be copied, which 
puts the scientific method first, regards sound morals but 
little, and conveniently absolves itself from all responsibil- 
ity about the character of its students, so long as they can 
use a microscope to magnify the strength of the empire. 
And if our universities cannot be guided by the English 
or French or German, they cannot be guided by any. They 
will take and they will leave whatever will serve their ends 
either by taking or leaving. Institutions will be built up 
which make for scholarship, for freedom, and for charac- 
ter, and which, withal, will look through American eyes 
upon questions of political policy, and train American 
hands to deftness in the constructive and manufacturing 
industries of most concern to the United States. 

There has been no more noteworthy or promising de- 
velopment in our intellectual, political, or industrial life 
than the flocking of students in recent years to the univer- 
sities which show a rational appreciation of the educational 



194 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

demands of our American life, and a reasonable disposition 
to meet tJie needs of the educational situation. Even where 
a university is not situated in a large city and is not sus- 
tained by an attendance which will go somewhere and 
can go nowhere else, it has stood in no need of students or of 
support if it could enter into the spirit of the Republic and 
would offer sound instruction which had some human 
interest and some real bearing upon practical training for 
our own professional and industrial life. 

A mere English or culturing training, no matter how 
excellent and necessary a thing in itself, is no longer a 
preparation for the professions. The legal profession de- 
mands that, and also a great and varied special library; a 
knowledge of legal history and theory ; certainty about the 
statutes and the decisions; aptness at associating all in a 
comprehensive and logical whole, and readiness at apply- 
ing the correct parts to new cases. It requires years of 
study under expert and practical teachers, with ample 
accommodations, in a special school, almost necessarily 
associated with a university. Medicine claims the English 
training, and then exacts years of research in chemistry, 
zoology, bacteriology, physiology, and other fundamental 
and kindred sciences, requiring great laboratories and 
costly equipment which can hardly be provided at all out- 
side of the great universities. After that, the theory and 
practice specially appertaining to the profession must have 
a special school, and again almost necessarily, one asso- 
ciated with a university. It is the same with architecture, 
and engineering, and agriculture, and all the professional 
and industrial activities of the country. It is even largely 
so with the fine arts. All demand the libraries, and labora- 
tories, and drafting-rooms, and shops, and athletic grounds, 
and gymnasiums, and kitchens, and all the other things 
which only the large universities can provide, and all stu- 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 195 

dents do their own work more happily and absorb much 
from the work of the others when they get their training in 
association with the crowd in the university. Wherever 
the university offers all these things, there the students 
gather ; there thought is free, — but is very liable to have 
the conceits taken out of its freedom ; there the actual do- 
ing outweighs the mere talk ; there practical research cuts 
dogmatism to the bone; there honest work has its reward, 
and pretense its quick condemnation; there men and wo- 
men measure up for what they are rather than for what 
they claim ; there inspiration is given to every proper am- 
bition, and there a great and true American university 
develops. 

All this has led to some very sharp differentiation be- 
tween the external forms and the manner of government 
and the plan of work of American and foreign universities. 
For example, the board of trustees is largely peculiar to 
American universities. It stands for the mass in university 
government and policy. On the other side of the sea there 
is no mass in university affairs. Charters run in the name 
of the king ; the king is the head of the university, as of the 
state ; and the king, or the king's minister, determines the 
course the university is to pursue. The early American 
colleges were all chartered by the king; even parliament 
had no part in the matter. In the midst of the Revolution, 
just following the defeat of St. Leger at Oriskany, of Clin- 
ton in his movement up the Hudson, and of Burgoyne at 
Saratoga, when neither king nor parliament was much in 
vogue in New York, and when a petition was presented to 
the young state government for the chartering of Union 
College, there was not a little embarrassment as to whether 
it should be addressed to the governor or to the legislature, 
and as to which should deal with it. Yankee ingenuity 
met the difficulty by addressing the prayer to both, and 



196 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

statecraft split the difference by creating the board of 
regents to deal with such matters. But, however char- 
tered, the board of trustees stands for the donors, the crea- 
tors, and the public, in giving trend to the course of the 
university. The point of it is that the founders, either 
the donors or the public, or both, are represented by the 
trustees. 

The early American colleges, copied upon foreign pro- 
totypes, have had to do so much readjusting that their 
old friends would not recognize them, and the ones which 
came a little later were shaped to fit situations which have 
nearly or quite disappeared. From now on they will not 
be able, and probably they will not be disposed, to dom- 
inate university policy in the United States. They will 
be obliged to work in accord with the overwhelming num- 
ber of universities, colleges, and secondary schools, taken 
together. They will have to accept students who can do 
their work, and who want to do it, without so much reference 
to how or what they have studied somewhere else. The 
western boys and girls say that under the accrediting 
system, by which institutions are examined more than 
students, it is easier to get into western than into eastern 
universities, but that, once in, it is hard to stay in a western 
university, while one who gets into an eastern university 
can hardly fail to be graduated if he will be polite to the 
professors and pay the term bills. And the western people 
say that their way is best; that every one must have his 
chance; that at least his chance is not to be taken away 
upon a false premise; that if he "flunks out" after having 
had his chance it is his fault, and no one is going to worry 
about it; and that it is better to regard the graduation 
standards and apply them to four years' work that the 
faculty must know all about than to make a fetich of en- 
trance requirements and have so much ado about prior 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 197 

work, — about which they can know very little at the best. 
It is all worth thinking about. 

The large and strong universities will not only wax 
larger and stronger, but they will multiply in number. Be- 
cause there will be so many of them, no one of them will 
serve so widely scattered a constituency as heretofore. 
Women are going to have the same rights as men to the 
higher learning. Boys will not always go to a university 
because their grandfathers went there. The time will come 
when every large and vigorous city and the territory natu- 
rally tributary thereto will have a great university, able not 
only to satisfy its needs of the culturing studies, but also its 
demands for professional and business upbuilding. 

What is to become of the literary colleges ? They are to 
flourish so long as they can provide the best instruction in 
the humanities, and do not assume names which they have 
no right to wear, and do not attempt to do work which they 
can do only indifferently. They will train for culture and 
they will prepare for the professional work as of yore. And 
wherever one does this well and is content to do so, it is to 
have every sympathy and support which an appreciative 
public can give. But no institutions, of whatever name or 
grade, are going to fool all the people for a great while, and 
the young men and women of America are going to have the 
best training that the world can give, and have it not a 
thousand miles from home. It is no longer necessary to 
cross the sea in order to get it, and even our own older 
universities are close upon the time when they must take ^ 
from the newer ones more than they give to them. 

Obviously, the American university, as no other univer- 
sity in the world, must regard the life and especially the 
employments of the people. It must exhibit catholicity of 
spirit ; it must tolerate all creeds ; it must inspire all schools ; 
it must guard all the professions, and it must strive to aid 



D 



198 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

all the industries. It must quicken civic feeling in a system 
where all depends upon the rule of the people. It must 
stand for work, for work of hand as well as of head, where 
all toil is alike honorable, and all worth is based upon 
respect for it. 

In a word, our immigration is making a nation of a wholly 
new order; our democracy is developing a new kind of 
civilization; our system of common schools, primary and 
secondary, has brought forth a type of advanced schools 
peculiar to the country. Institutions that would prosper 
may well recognize the fact. The universities that would 
thrive must put away all exclusiveness and dedicate them- 
selves to universal public service. They must not try to 
keep people out; they must help all who are worthy to get 
in. It is not necessary that all of these institutions shall 
stand upon exactly the same level ; it is necessary that each 
shall have a large constituency; it is necessary that all shall 
connect with the schools that are below them. It is im- 
perative that all shall value the man at his true worth and 
not reject him because his preparation has lacked an in- 
gredient which a professor has been brought up to worship. 
Essentially so when, in case the boy has studied the sub- 
ject in the high school, the professor is as likely as other- 
wise to tell him that he has been wrongly taught, and that 
he must get what he has learned out of his head before he 
can start right and hope to know the thing as he ought. It 
is necessary that all shall be keen enough to see what is 
of human interest, and broad enough to promote every 
9,ctivity in which any number of people may engage. 

The American university will carry the benefits of 
scientific research to the doors of the multitude. It will 
make more sanitary houses and handsomer streets, richer 
farms and safer railways, happier towns and thriftier cities, 
through the application of fundamental principles to all 



THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY 199 

the activities of all the people. It will train balanced men 
and women, and therefore it will promote sport as well as 
work, and control the conduct of students as well as open 
their minds. It will not absolve itself from any legitimate 
responsibilities which instructors are bound to bear towards 
youth. It will preserve the freedom of teaching, but it 
will not tolerate freakishness or license in the nanje of 
freedom of teaching. It will engage in research as well as 
instruction, but when men absolve themselves from teach- 
ing for the sake of research it will insist upon a grain of 
discovery in the course of a human life. There is a distinct 
national spirit in America. An American university will 
understand how that has come to be and what it is aiming 
at, will fall in with it, will be optimistic about it, and will 
help it on to its fullest consummation. 



II 

THE TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Americans are ever ready to try out new propositions. Not 
many Americans are very discriminating about projects. 
The spirit of the country is not satisfied until suggestions 
have been put to the practical test. If individual and per- 
sonal initiative is needed, any number of people will supply 
it ; if public action is necessary, nearly everybody will sup- 
port it. As individuals, and even more as a people, we 
are bound to get all the possibilities out of all the things 
we chance to think of. Our native energy and common 
optimism are ever disposed to experiment, and our free- 
flowing democracy and our much legislation make it easy 
enough to do so. If something results we are very happy 
for we have made an addition to our already very good 
collection of national assets ; if nothing results there is no 
harm, — we have had the fun which we get out of experi- 
menting, and the laugh which we associate with failure. It 
all stimulates productivity. It puts a premium upon the 
novel ; but it makes headway and brings out great results. 
Our energy and our optimism are valuable national prop- 
erties. They lead us into some passing blunders, but they 
give us many enduring results. 

It is strikingly so in matters educational. It is the inten- 
tion of the people who control the destiny of the United 
States to do everything, to try out every manner of experi- 
ment, which may raise the common level of intelligence and 
enlarge the opportunity of the boy or girl, the man or wo- 
man, in the crowd. It comes pretty near being the national 
religion. It leads to some incidental absurdities, but to 
more very striking and permanent advances. 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 201 

There is apparently some growing doubt in the land 
about all men being created equal. There is even some 
skepticism about the laws being wholly without favor, or 
at least about their being administered so that the rights 
of all are exactly alike ; but there is no doubt whatever of 
the common determination that every American boy or 
girl shall have his or her full opportunity through an ab- 
solute equality of right to an education. That, at least, has 
by the common impulse become the first law of our land. 
The sense of proprietorship in the educational system is 
universal, and the purpose to make that system the widest 
and the best in the world is not at all obscure. 

The early thought of the nation about education — the 
thought which our English forefathers brought from over 
the sea — has completely changed. It is not something 
good which government is to encourage, but something 
vital which government must provide. And the govern- 
ment which is to provide it must of necessity be sovereign 
as well as local and administrative. The educational sys- 
tem is no longer a system which shall supply the elements 
of knowledge or the primary instruments for gaining know- 
ledge, but a system which is expected to supply all the 
knowledge which any son or daughter of the state has the 
preparation and the will to come and take. It no longer 
acts through schools alone, but through libraries, museums, 
clubs, lectures, publications, and all other instrumental- 
ities which may possibly raise the level of the intellectual 
plane. 

And when so much in every direction is being attempted 
at public expense, through officials who are not always 
experienced, and who get no credit for being conservative, 
there must be a good deal of commotion much of the time, 
and no little uncertainty about the net results. 

Teachers and other professional managers naturally 



202 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

respond to the popular impulse ; not a few of them capital- 
ize it. When the voice of the people sounds an advance, 
when the educational associations are ravenous for some- 
thing new to discuss, when the daily newspapers discrimi- 
nate in favor of things that are novel, when celebrity is 
dependent upon proposing something out of the ordinary, 
teachers, like other classes of our resourceful fellow country- 
men, are not likely to be weighed in the balance and found 
wanting. And it must be admitted that they enjoy it. Even 
if discussion and agitation do not bring forth results that 
are lasting, they supply the intellectual pastime which 
teachers sorely need. 

But propositions and projects are not tendencies. Even 
discussions which entertain for an interminable time and 
movements which take forever to come to something or 
nothing, are not trends, but only persistencies, in educa- 
tion. The national character goes on unfolding in its own 
exclusive and imperial way. It adopts and adapts what can 
enlarge and enrich the soul of the Republic: all the rest 
comes to naught. American education accepts and incorpo- 
rates what can add to the intellectual stores, the mental 
culture, the philosophical sense, and the industrial pro- 
ductivity of a free people; the rest is forgotten. 

One cannot traverse the last twenty-five years of Ameri- 
can educational progress without seeing many develop- 
ments which are so substantial and decisive, and withal 
so completely accomplished, that they must have become 
permanent. That period has been marked by truly mar- 
velous advances, not only in the professional, but in the 
common thought of the nation. It is not too much to say 
that no such educational advance has been made in all the 
other history of democratic government and of the English- 
speaking race. So rapidly and confidently has universal 
education moved in this country and in our generation that 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 203 

the outlines of the national educational system of the future 
begin to appear. 

A very distinct differentiation of the schools into ele- 
mentary, secondary, and higher grades, for the purpose of 
administration, is going forward. The professional mind 
is making it and the lay mind is accepting it. It is advan- 
tageous to each grade of schools because it puts each upon 
its own ground and holds each to its own responsibilities. 
It makes educational values more stable and constant, and 
it fixes standards capable of wider use. It discredits pre- 
tenders, and helps to clear away popular confusion. 

In the last thirty or thirty-five years the system of collegi- 
ate schools has advanced in numbers, in character, in at- 
tendance, in the multiplicity of offerings, and in the measure 
of public support and popular interest, to an extent which 
is alike surprising and gratifying to educationists. The col- 
lege system is giving far more uplift and direction to all 
schools than the people realize. True as to all parts of the 
country, this is most emphatically true in the newer parts 
where democracy has little to hamper it, where new insti- 
tutions have not come into conflict with older ones which 
had pretty good rights to the ground and could neither give 
way nor easily change in character, theory, spirit, relations, 
or outlook. The sure trend of our educational system is 
certainly more clearly apparent in the newer states where 
both the national and state governments have freedom and 
disposition to cooperate with exceedingly ambitious people 
who are setting up new institutions. It is particularly true 
concerning institutions of advanced grade which are pro- 
viding a general rather than a local service. 

Of course no unfavorable implications are cast upon the 
eastern and older colleges. Indeed, it is doubtless true that 
some of them are entitled to great credit for having broken 
away from educationally hide-bound constituencies and 



204 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

supposedly settled theories, for having accepted the guid- 
ance of liberal and masterful leaders, and for having pos- 
sessed the courage and asserted the freedom necessary to 
wider service. Possibly the western pioneers, with a neces- 
sarily wider because a later outlook, and with less hin- 
drances than the eastern pioneers, are not entitled to so 
much credit for drawing upon the world's later experi- 
ences and making at first hand, controlling, supporting, 
and shaping to their own ends what the country most needs 
in the way of both upper and lower schools. 

Any substantial uplift in a system of education must 
come from above. Any great improvement or advance in a 
class of schools must come from a class of schools higher 
up. This fact is now actually coming to be recognized by 
the lower schools themselves in America, and that of itself 
is giving unwonted trend and character to the national 
school system. But it necessarily follows that the factors 
which enter into the scheme and give turns to the plans of 
the upper schools exert a very strong influence upon the 
kind of uplift and the direction of the development which 
those schools give to the middle and lower schools. 

In the older states three or four of the better colleges of 
our fathers have in the last generation developed into lead- 
ing universities with most of the faculties which educa- 
tional traditions and modern philosophical and material 
development make needful. In the meantime the other 
earlier colleges are getting their ratings and finding their 
real work in a somewhat exclusive field, but finding new 
satisfaction in occupying that field with added usefulness 
and honor. And many new institutions have been estab- 
lished, to fall into one class or another of the higher insti- 
tutions. The stronger of these institutions in a very great 
measure, and the others in some measure, are giving tone 
and breadth to our national scholarship. But, on the whole, 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 205 

it must be said that they are doing this through their grad- 
uates, through our professional and business affairs, through 
the teachers they have trained for other colleges and uni- 
versities, rather than through any very direct bearing which 
they have had upon the lower schools. They have sus- 
tained no organic, nor indeed any very sympathetic, con- 
nection with lower schools, and their main influence upon 
the middle schools has had reference to getting students 
for themselves and to having them prepared to meet their 
own circumstances and their particular demands. Not 
more than two or three of the older universities, of which 
Harvard and Columbia are conspicuous examples, have 
provided substantial offerings in educational science and 
administration, or really undertaken in a rational way to 
study, to train teachers for, or to give energy and direction 
to, the schools below them. With these very rare exceptions, 
the older universities and colleges have given only very 
indirect and disjointed, and often very self-interested, aid 
to the primary and secondary school systems which have 
been maturing very rapidly and substantially all around 
them. 

In all states west of New York and Pennsylvania, and in 
many of the southern states, a distinctly new class of ad- 
vanced institutions has grown up. In many cases they 
came into being before the Civil War, and often they were 
established and provided with revenues by the state con- 
stitutions. In several instances the state universities already 
established were given the federal grants of common lands 
and public moneys for research ; in other cases these grants 
resulted in new institutions of the more distinctly agricul- 
tural and mechanical type. With or without this aid, the 
state universities began to enlist the enthusiastic interest 
and financial support of the people of their states in the 
seventies and eighties, which became even more decisive 



206 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

in the nineties, and has now gone so far as to completely 
assure not only their continuance, but their continually 
enlarging and absolutely decisive influence upon all of the 
educational activities of their states. 

If we were to name twenty of the largest American uni- 
versities, counting by buildings, equipment, faculties, reve- 
nues, offerings, libraries, and attendance, more than half 
of them would be state universities. Several of these have 
faculties numbering from three hundred to five hundred 
teachers, representing every culturing, professional, philo- 
sophical, and industrial interest of our widely diversified 
modern education; and their student bodies often include 
from three thousand to five thousand people. Their as- 
sured support in popular sympathy and public money is 
alike munificent and magnificent. Their graduates are of 
course most numerous in their own states, but they are not 
unknown in any part of the country, nor indeed in any part 
of any country where something worth while is going on. 

The influence of Columbia and Harvard and Yale and 
some others upon these western universities will always be 
gratefully admitted, but that should not disguise the fact 
that they have individuality, purpose, and outlook very 
thoroughly their own. Refraining from comparisons — 
as idle as odious — it is moderate to say that in ambition 
and energy, in the variety of their work and the plane 
of their standards, in the seriousness and the democratic 
resourcefulness of their students and the steadily aug- 
menting power of their graduates, and particularly in 
what they are doing for the industrial development and the 
sane thinking of the country, they have come to give a 
decisive trend to the future of American education. 

To bring out the special bearing of this work, under the 
particular environing influences, on literary culture, on the 
political sciences, on scientific research, on law, medicine. 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 207 

and architecture, on all lines of engineering, and upon the 
constructive and agricultural industries, very much might 
be justly said. 

In all parts of the country the secondary schools have 
become an integral part of the public educational system. 
In all of the Central, Rocky Mountain, and Pacific states 
the universities have also become a part of that system. 
In the East the public school system has twelve grades ; in 
the West it has sixteen. The extent to which the university 
has become a part of the common school system may be 
seen from the following bare statements: (a) It lays out 
the courses for the high schools. (6) It supplies a very con- 
siderable part of the high school teachers, (c) It inspects 
the high schools regularly with its own oflBcer. (d) It ad- 
mits students to the university without examination, from 
approved high schools, and under the stimulus of popular 
demand all of the high schools must become worthy of 
approval, (e) The university takes a keen interest in ele- 
mentary school questions, and is an ever present influence 
in the teachers' associations. (/) It makes the common 
schools the laboratories of its education department, (g) 
It responds to all popular demands, and becomes a potent 
factor in determining educational legislation and shaping 
educational policy, (h) It is free, and all ambitious eyes 
are turned toward it ; it is popular, and all boys and girls 
in the high schools think about going to it. (i) It naturally 
comes to be looked upon as belonging to all the people and 
so becomes the responsible head and guide of the public 
educational system. 

Of course, this affects the university itself as much as the 
rest of the system, and again, of course, it brings out a 
university suited to the needs of a busy, prosperous, and 
ambitious people, who want the best in the world educa- 
tionally and are determined to make very free use of their 



208 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

power to have it. In other words, it is bringing out in our 
states a new style of university which is already giving 
decisive trend to the national system of education. And a 
process which has gone so far in all the states save a half 
dozen seems likely to be adopted in every state where exist- 
ing universities do not meet every need at a nominal cost. 
In newer and older states the new order of university is 
sure to become yet more decisive in its influence. 

Again let it be said that in all this there is no element 
of implication against the older universities or the literary 
colleges, which find all the work that they can do thor- 
oughly and well. Inheriting much from European thought 
and forms, shaped by American conditions when classical 
training was the sum and professional employments the 
goal of college work, they have aided and been themselves 
influenced by the development of a distinctly new class of 
institutions of higher learning, which have been obliged 
by the democratic advance in political science and indus- 
trial prosperity to defy both English and German models, 
train for both scholarship and character, and provide 
practically free instruction in any study to any qualified 
student. 

If one will realize that this great and popular university 
development within the public educational system is uni- 
versal in the states which embrace the centres of popula- 
tion, of industrial productivity, and of political control in 
our country, one will be able to appreciate something of 
the overwhelming trend which it is giving to our education, 
and that it is clearly moving our entire system of schools, 
higher and lower, toward resourcefulness, by the training 
which fits one for successful living in our complex civiliza- 
tion. The mere rudiments which enable a child to read and 
write are far from sufficient in the elementary schools, and 
the linguistic studies which are merely culturing, in the old 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 209 

sense of the term, are no longer in the highest favor in the 
advanced schools. The early ideals are passing away. The 
little child must be trained to see, to think, to do, and to 
express himself; the college student must get the know- 
ledge, the purpose, the power, the steadiness, and the 
endurance which accomplish substantial results, through 
mental or manual labor. Culture which gains recognition 
in this country must be more than skin-deep, and must 
come from thfr reactionary discipline of work upon the 
workman. 

The trend of our higher education, up to the present 
generation, was toward respectable polish for the idle rich, 
and toward some preparation for the learned professions. 
The trend of our higher education now is toward a much 
better preparation for the professions and toward very 
complete preparation for all of the skilled employments, 
all of the constructive industries, and all of the commercial 
activities. 

The more complete preparation for the professions has 
arisen from within the professions themselves, and has 
resulted very largely from legislation limiting admissions 
to them. It is but just to say that in this the state 
of New York has been foremost. In requiring (a) four 
years' satisfactory work in an approved school of academic 
grade; (b) four years' satisfactory work in an approved 
professional school, with the bachelor's degree from an 
institution duly empowered to confer it, as conditions for 
admission to the state licensing examination ; and (c) in 
sharply limiting the use of the terms college and university. 
New York has given real trend to professional education 
and professional standards, which many of the states 
about her are happily beginning to adopt. 

In this connection it would be a mistake to omit mention 
of the decisive tendency to prepare for the professions in 



210 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

professional schools which are associated with the univer- 
sities, rather than in offices or in independent institutions. 
This has led many independent professional schools to seek 
alliances with universities. It is surely making both the 
preliminary and professional training much stronger, and 
it is leading a much larger number of students to more 
thorough training than they would otherwise get. When 
we recall how recently there was little preparation, either 
scholastic or technical, for the professions in America, and 
how superficial much of the training in independent schools 
by lecturers who were carrying on regular practice has 
been, we have special satisfaction in realizing the extent 
and excellence of the work which the universities are now 
doing for professional learning and expertness. 

The aggressive work of the universities, other than that 
which is in preparation for the learned professions, has 
come to be in the courses which are fundamental in ad- 
ministration and in the most successful carrying on of the 
commercial activities and the constructive and manufac- 
turing industries. There is large demand for training in the 
chemistry which enters into agricultural and manufacturing 
activities, in all lines of engineering, in the economics of 
productivity and trade, and in the technic of all the busi- 
nesses which follow after them. There is more demand also 
for the basic work of the political sciences. The demand 
is the largest where the equipment and teaching are the 
best. Of course, this all relates to and shapes the courses 
in the high schools, and in some measure in the elemen- 
tary schools. 

It is doing more than causing the lower schools to pre- 
pare students for the higher schools. It is developing a 
rather common belief in the crowd that a university which 
does little besides berate the lower schools about suitably 
training students for itself, is not doing overmuch for edu- 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 211 

cation ; that young people must be trained for subordinate 
places in business and for manual skill in the trades as well 
as for the colleges and for positions claiming deep scientific 
knowledge ; that the high schools have not yet accomplished 
all they ought in this direction, and that there is something 
lacking in the way of training the masses of children in the 
elementary schools for efficiency and contentment in the 
situations in life which they are likely to occupy ; that some- 
thing in the way of public trade schools must be estab- 
lished for the children of the masses at a rather early age, 
and that the universities and colleges are called upon to 
recognize that fact and help realize it. In a word, the very 
development of the higher learning is creating the common 
thought that more must be done for the elementary learn- 
ing, that not so much is being done for those who do not go 
to college as for those who do, and that more must be done 
to adapt the training of the masses to probable environ- 
ment and to the inevitable conditions of hand labor and 
other self-respecting and useful employments. 

One of the most gratifying developments of recent 
years in school administration relates not more to the bet- 
ter understandings and the warmer friendships between 
schools of different grades than between public and private 
schools, and between schools in one section of the country 
with those in another. Presidents and principals and 
superintendents and teachers are beginning to learn that 
one gets rich in education not by withholding, but by giving, 
and that prosperity comes to an institution which knows 
enough to attend to its own business when it ought and to 
aid other institutions when it may. This knowledge is 
propagating deeper mutual respect and closer fraternal 
regard. Cooperation, rather than competition, is coming 
to be the policy of the schools. 

This growing disposition toward mutual helpfulness 



212 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

recognizes no state lines or other political boundaries. It is 
indifferent to provincialism, to sectarianism, to politics, and 
to all other forms of exclusiveness. That there is a " de- 
mocracy of learning" which embraces men and women 
who live in every state and every land, and which gives its 
ennobling inspiration to persons of every class or race, or 
church or party, and which is going to aid every intellec- 
tual and moral interest of mankind at every opportunity, 
is coming to be known wherever there are men and w^omen 
who are moved by the spirit which God has placed in every 
human breast. It is making the widest, the finest, the most 
inspiring, and the most influential fraternity that the 
world has ever known. 

In later years there has been a very significant enlarge- 
ment of the understanding that the true functions of a 
democratic state justify it in entering upon divers educa- 
tional activities outside of the schools. It is coming to be 
accepted without cavil that the state may not only build 
up a state library for the use of state officials, legislators, 
and judges, but a state library for the aid of the professions, 
or for any other interest which may be aided by a collection 
of books which it cannot itself easily secure or maintain; 
that books may be loaned from the state library to any one 
needing them ; that local libraries are to be encouraged, 
subsidized, and guided; and that traveling libraries may 
be sent about the state to quicken study in every direction. 
This tendency goes beyond libraries; it extends to mu- 
seums and all collections which may interest and instruct 
the crowd ; it is very jealous of original historic manuscripts 
and mementos; it sends standard pictures to the schools 
and all manner of institutions, and it gives help to art 
centres, reading circles, study clubs, lecture assemblies, 
and all other intellectual activities whether they are in- 
dividual or associated. 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 213 

The tendency is going yet further. It is extending 
scientific research to matters concerning the public health, 
and even to commercial and industrial activities. It would 
extend every facility to sane and logical thinking and to all 
rational doing. One state erects laboratories for the chemi- 
cal, microscopical, and bacterial examination of diseased 
tissue; another analyzes all drinking water sent to its 
scientific laboratories and determines whether or not the 
specimens are free from contamination ; another conserves 
the animals in its forests and propagates the fishes in its 
waters ; another works up its clays into forms both useful 
and beautiful; another measures the carbon in its coals; 
another tells its farmers how to add to the potentiality of 
their acres and what crops will command the readiest 
markets ; and yet another shows its railroads how to get a 
maximum of speed and hauling power at a minimum of 
cost. All this and much more is going on, often all of 
these things, and more, in the same state. The tendency 
is growing rapidly. It seems destined to give even more 
decisive turns to the future of our education and our civil- 
ization. 

The truly significant thing about it is that the more and 
the better it is done the stronger is the popular support. 
There is no socialism or paternalism about it. It is merely 
the outworking of the fundamental American doctrine that 
in education the masses have the same right of opportunity 
as the classes. It is using the combined political power to 
gain the educational results in a short time which without 
that power a few favored people may get in a long time, and 
often keep to themselves for a yet longer time. It is all 
illustrative of the inherent spirit of the country and of the 
roads which that spirit is bound to break out and follow. 

The growing culture, as well as the ever developing 
business of the country, is quickly reflected in our schools. 



214 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

There is no country in which the changes are so frequent 
and the accumulations so apparent, and the progress so 
rapid ; and there is none in which all this so quickly affects 
the situations and policies of the schools. This is well il- 
lustrated in the architecture and the multiplying adorn- 
ments of the newer school buildings at nearly all of the 
centres of population. It appears, also, in the art courses 
which are making their way into the programmes of the 
schools. The great wealth of the country which embellishes 
and cultures so many homes does the same for the schools 
— with this difference, that the influence of it is even more 
widely and sanely exerted in the schools than in the homes, 
because the schools are not so likely to be inherited by the 
superficial and idle rich, with all that is implied thereby. 
The schools are, in a way, becoming more and more the 
accumulating and distributing points of the country's cul- 
ture as well as of the country's justice and prosperity. 

Of course, the large fortunes are producing some exces- 
sive and unwholesome luxury in the life at some of the 
universities, but there is no more democratic and leveling 
institution in the world than an American university, and 
the students who use their wealth grossly and live riotously 
are no less likely to lose standing in the common sentiment 
of the crowd than they are to meet their fate in the semester 
examinations. 

The physical training which is now required very uni- 
formly of the mass of college students and the extent to 
which sports have been organized are giving manifest turns 
to our newer education. There is a new respect for health 
and a new enthusiasm for physical accomplishment. There 
is a new valuation upon sport and a wider interest in keep- 
ing it clean. The whole thing is doing much to attract 
youth to the high schools and colleges, and is exercising 
an unmistakable influence upon the life in the elementary 



TREND IN AMERICAN EDUCATION 215 

schools. Of course there are and will be excesses, but, on 
the whole, the influence is good. Children endure pain with 
less whimpering; life in the open is not only generating 
new power, but creating new ideals ; and the thinking of 
young people in both city and country grows more sane 
and ambitious through the striking development of physical 
training in the schools and of organized interscholastic 
sport. 

No one can foresee the destiny of the Republic, but that 
there is an educational purpose abroad in the land which 
has never before been so pervasive and so ambitious in any 
land seems clear. It is the spirit of a mighty people, gath- 
ered from the ends of the earth, enlightened by the world 
experiences of a thousatid years. It is the spirit of a people 
with outlook and expectancy. The functions of the state 
concerning every manner of educational activity, in and 
out of the schools, are being steadily enlarged and 
strengthened through the initiative or the common desire 
of the multitude. Growing appreciation is giving greater 
heed to the advanced institutions and bringing them 
to the aid of all institutions, and therefore to the intel- 
lectual quickening of the entire country. Everything that 
the nation, the state, or the municipality can do to aid true 
learning, without any injustice, it is to be made to do. And 
the learning which aids doing and the culture which is the 
product of labor are to be of the most worth. 



Ill 

STATE UNIVERSITIES 

One who has been privileged to sustain living relations 
with the educational work of the East and the West of our 
country soon realizes that the educational atmosphere of 
each section has qualities which are peculiar to it, and soon 
sees that the points of view, the habits of thought, and the 
ways of going about things east and west of the Alleghanies 
are quite distinct. Educationally the East is given to wis- 
dom, is deliberate, has quite as much resistive power as 
aggressiveness, is inclined to be suspicious, and refuses to 
initiate a movement until it thinks it sees clearly what the 
end will be. The West is hearty and impulsive, plunges into 
whatever engages its interest, relies upon its resourceful- 
ness, and worries very little about results. The results are 
never disappointing. If the outcome is good much is made 
of it; if not, the movement is lightly regarded, for by that 
time the mind is fully occupied with other things. The 
Westerners are easier travelers, better "mixers," and more 
enthusiastic and aggressive searchers for information than 
the Easterners. An eastern schoolman knows much about 
schoolhouses and appliances, and is reasonably content 
with what he knows ; a western man is never too old or too 
tired to go to the top or the bottom of a school building, in 
the hope of finding a new appliance or a fresh suggestion 
in it. The eastern men may go to educational conferences 
two or three times a year, in the stern performance of a 
religious duty ; the western men want a convention every 
week, and seldom lose an opportunity to be in at the start 
and open a discussion of facts and philosophies at a canter. 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 217 

Many of the western schoolmen have lived in the East, 
and although they have been lured by the star of empire, 
their interest in the East will never abate. More of them 
go to the Middle and New England states every year, for 
they will travel, and all the roads lead that way and they 
know where the good roads are. Practically all of them 
read the eastern educational periodicals, gaining informa- 
tion, and looking for things worth discussing or proposing at 
home. One result of all this is that the western men know 
infinitely more about matters educational in the East than 
the eastern men do of such matters in the West. Indeed, 
it is not too much to say that many of the schoolmen in the 
great states which are now central in the Union are quite 
as much in touch with matters educational in the East as 
many of the eastern men are themselves. The converse 
of all this is not generally true, and it is strikingly untrue 
so far as an understanding in the East of the growth and 
the work of western universities is concerned. 

Of course, the intellectual activity and the prevalent 
commercial spirit of the West have combined to produce 
many concerns which are worthless, some of which should 
be brought within provisions of the penal code and engage 
the active attention of the police. The proprietors seek 
high-sounding names for such establishments, and the 
public sense of propriety and of justice has not yet reached 
the point of aiding the worthy by stopping the misap- 
propriation of titles by the unworthy to any such extent as 
has been well commenced in the East. Yet there are en- 
couraging signs of public interest in the subject, and when 
it has advanced a few steps further corrective remedies are 
likely to be applied with a rush. 

The West is dotted over with commercial institutions, 
many of them worthy enough, trying to sustain names which 
do not fit, and which really curse them. While this is not 



218 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

at all peculiar to the West, it is true that it is more common 
there than in the East. May the time speedily come when 
the common sentiment of the country will make it clear to 
educational enterprises that it will be to their advantage 
to discriminate in the use of titles and claim only what 
they are able to perform, and that it will be quickly to their 
hurt to fall short of making goo^ their assurances. 

There are a score or more of (denominational colleges in 
every western state. These were founded by the churches, 
in the pioneer days, as instruments for denominational up- 
building. For long years they were the only schools with 
any pretense to advanced grade in the West ; and they are 
always to be regarded with sympathy and spoken of with 
respect. Some of them, of which Oberlin (1833) , in Ohio ; 
Illinois (Jacksonville, 1829) and Knox (Galesburg, 1837), 
in Illinois; Beloit (1846), in Wisconsin; Iowa (Grinnell, 
1847), in Iowa, and Colorado (Colorado Springs, 1874), 
in Colorado, are perhaps the best types, have been able to 
adjust themselves to the new conditions which have been 
brought about by the filling up of the country and by the 
educational advance, have been content to do college work 
well, have gathered considerable endowments, and have 
become so influential and so much beloved as to be assured 
of strong and useful futures ; and all lovers of learning re- 
joice with them in the fact. Some of them, with no abate- 
ment of the spirit of Christianity, have laid aside the de- 
nominational garb in order to attract the support of wider 
constituencies. But a larger number of the denominational 
colleges have been unable to cope with or adjust them- 
selves to the educational evolution of recent decades. Some 
of them are doing work which, in quality and in quantity, 
is below the grade of good high schools. Their churches 
are being enjoined, as a Christian duty, to give what they 
are unable to give to their support, when all that these 




STATE UNIVERSITIES 219 

schools are doing, and much more, is being better done 
than they can hope to do it by the ordinary schools and the 
publicly supported institutions of their states. Of course it 
will be said that the denominations are unwilling to educate 
their youth except under denominational supervision ; that 
it is a matter of faith and cannot be departed from. The 
merits of that subject cannot be discussed here, but it is 
not too much to say that the logic of events has proved that 
the inevitable trend of American sentiment is strongly 
against that position. 

The logic of events is abundantly exemplified in the 
munificent provision for a public high school in every city, 
village, or sparsely settled township, and particularly in 
the splendid advance of the state university movement 
in the West. 

There has been no movement undertaken by our de- 
mocracy so significant and encouraging as that which has 
resulted in the great state universities of the Central and 
Western states. The sentiment which supports it is prac- 
tically universal. No people have ever before carried 
forward such a movement on any similar scale. In the 
early days Massachusetts and Connecticut and New York 
and New Jersey gave substantial aid to Harvard and Yale 
and Columbia and Princeton, but without any idea of 
becoiping responsible for their permanent support and 
management. The common thought as to the functions of 
government touching education would not permit more 
than state aid and encouragement to a university in the 
colonial days, or even in the earlier years of the "more 
perfect Union." The advance of the Republic created the 
need, and the breaking of the great West opened the way for 
a new educational order of things. The pioneers built for 
the future. They were proud to commence new movements 
and to lay broad foundations. They believed that govern- 



220 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ment should stand for the progress as well as for the mere 
security of the people, and they were only too glad to 
struggle and sacrifice in the hope that their children would 
fare better than they. 

Out of this came provisions for people's universities in 
the constitutions of many of the new states, and an actual 
university supported and managed by every state west of 
New York and Pennsylvania. Such universities were 
founded in Indiana in 1820, in Michigan in 1837, in Mis- 
souri in 1839, in Iowa in 1847, in Wisconsin in 1848, in 
Kansas in 1864, in Illinois in 1867, in California in 1868, 
in Minnesota in 1869, in Nebraska in 1869, in Ohio in 
1870, and in Colorado in 1876. And in practically every 
case a university has developed to a plane not reached by 
the oldest and strongest institutions of the country a single 
generation ago, and not attained by more than a bare 
half dozen now. 

In some states the state universities are united with the 
agricultural and mechanical colleges resulting from the 
national land grant acts, while in others they are main- 
tained separately. In either case, the common sentiment 
of the people supports the purpose of the universities to 
enter every field of scientific research and intellectual 
activity. Ancient and modern languages and literatures, 
rhetoric and oratory, history and philosophy, economics and 
sociology and ethics, pedagogy and psychology, music and 
sketching and painting, mathematics, the earth and air and 
water and sky and life sciences, medicine and pharmacy 
and dentistry, law in every phase of the science, agriculture 
and horticulture, the raising of wheat and corn as well as 
of animals, dairying and home-making, architecture, civil 
engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineer- 
ing, municipal and sanitary engineering, railway engi- 
neering, mining engineering, library science, physical train- 



cii;j;;l>^^n^'"v~-'> 



STATE UNIVERSITIES 221 

ing, and every other interest which challenges thorough 
study are grouped in separate colleges, schools, or depart- 
ments, with the necessary libraries and laboratories and 
farms and shops for the most practical and effective 
work. ' 

In all these universities there is a complete military 
organization in charge of a United States army officer, and 
no one of them is without a military band and an orchestra, 
a choral society and glee clubs and quartettes, an athletic 
field and "teams" without number, social and literary 
clubs, Greek letter fraternities galore, men and women's 
Christian associations, and all the other acquisitions of 
modern university life. 

The relations between the state universities and the pub- 
lic high schools are direct and close. The universities re- 
ceive students upon examination, but they also have a 
system of accrediting high schools which is peculiar to the 
West. The universities inspect the high schools — the 
courses of work and the teaching — by faculty commit- 
tees, or, now, more commonly by an officer called the high 
school visitor; and, upon approval, receive their graduates 
without examination. This aids the high school, for it is 
held to reflect upon one if it is not upon the accredited list 
of the university. The eastern universities are inclined to 
scoff at this, but it will be surprising if they are not doing 
the same thing before many years. Of course some students 
get into the universities who cannot sustain themselves, 
but it is better so than it is to keep students out of college 
who want to go and who cannot fit into the precise grooves 
of an examination set by persons knowing little of their 
work and nothing of their resources. 

All classes are represented in the great student bodies of 
the state universities, but the middle class predominates 
overwhelmingly. There are some who find it necessary 



222 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to "work their way," and if they do it and sustain them- 
selves in their university work they uniformly gain the 
respect they deserve for it. There is no discussion of the 
merits of co-education, and no isolated woman's college 
in the university group. Young men and young women 
work side by side in classrooms and laboratories, they 
attend social gatherings in company, with little in the way 
of regulations which is not self-imposed, and with the very 
best results. Comradeship between faculty and students is 
free and helpful to both. Life is free and genuine and nat- 
ural and earnest, the sentiment of the campus is whole- 
some, the work is severe, and the semester examinations 
are inexorable. 

An eastern man is likely to inquire about the part which 
politics plays in the administration of the state universities. 
It plays no part. There is no state college or university of 
any standing that is not wholly free from political or other 
domination, and nothing is clearer than that the people 
intend to have it so. 

The higher institutions of learning in the West have come 
to know very well that the advance of each strengthens all. 
Relations are cordial, and all seem to be working effectually 
together to stimulate the secondary schools and exert a 
decisive and ennobling influence upon the life of the people. 
The age is one which will be distinguished by the diffusion 
of the higher learning, by its much wider applications to 
the daily life and institutions of the people ; and it may be 
confidently believed that time will show abundantly that 
the people of the Central and Western states have borne a 
notable and an honorable part to that great end. 



IV 

THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 

The responsible authorities in the management of a uni- 
versity are the trustees, the president, and the faculty. 
Legal enactments settle in some measure the exact func- 
tions of each, but common knowledge of the kinds of gov- 
ernment which succeed when much property and many 
interests are involved, as well as the imperative necessities 
of the particular situation, have gone much further to 
establish the governmental procedure in the university. 
While the immediate purpose is to exploit the functions 
and powers of the university president, some reference, 
necessarily brief, must be made to the prerogatives and 
duties of the trustees and faculty. 

A vital principle in all government involving many cares 
and interests is tersely expressed in the statement that 
bodies legislate and individuals execute. It goes without 
saying that legislation must be by a body which is both 
morally responsible and legally competent, and common 
observation proves that it must concern a real situation, to 
be of any real worth. If it involves special knowledge, it 
must be by men who have the knowledge or who will re- 
spect the opinions of others who have. 

The trustees of a university are charged by law, either 
statutory or judge-made, or by widely acknowledged 
usage, with that general oversight and that legislative 
direction which will make sure of the true execution of the 
trust. They are to secure revenues and control expendi- 
tures. They are to prevent waste and assure results. They 
are never to forget that they represent the people who 



224 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

created and who maintain the university. They are not 
to represent these people as a tombstone might — but as 
living men may. They are to do the things their principals 
would assuredly do, if in their places, to enlarge the ad- 
vantage to the cestui que trust. This is a heavy burden. 
It must be assumed that it is given to picked men who are 
especially able to bear it; who would not give their time 
to it for mere money compensation, but are happy in doing 
it for the sake of promoting the best and noblest things. 

The trustees do not live upon the campus, and they are 
not assumed to be professional educationists. Their judg- 
ment is likely to be quite as good upon the relations of the 
work to the public interests, and as to what the institution 
should do to fulfill its mission, as that of any expert would 
be. To get done what they want done, they must enact di- 
rections and appoint competent agents. The individual 
trustee has no power of supervision or direction not given 
to him by the recorded action of the board. What they 
do is to be done in session after the modification of indi- 
vidual opinions through joint discussion. It must be re- 
duced to exact form and stand in a permanent record. 
Trustees make a mess of it when they usurp executive 
functions, and they sow dragons' teeth when they intrigue 
with a teacher, or hunt a job for a patriot who thinks he is 
in need of it. They are bound to regard expert opinion 
and to appoint agents who can render more expert ser- 
vices than any others who can be procured. They are to 
keep the experts sane, on the earth, in touch with the 
world, as it were. They are to sustain agents and help 
them to succeed, and they are to remove agents who are 
not successful. From a point of view remote enough and 
high enough, they are to inspect the whole field. They are 
bound to be familiar with all that the institution is doing. 
They are to be alert in keeping the whole organization 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY £25 

free from whatever may corrupt, and up to the very top 
notch of efficient public service. There is too much money 
involved to permit of foolishness, too high interests at 
stake to allow of vacillation and uncertainty. Under a 
responsibility that is unceasing and unrelenting they must 
learn the truth and never hesitate to act. And they must 
find their abundant reward, not in any material return 
to themselves, but in the splendid fact that the great ag- 
gregation of land and structure and equipment, of great 
teachers and aspiring students, of sacred memories and 
precious hopes and potential possibilities, is doing the 
work of God and man in the most perfect way and in the 
largest measure which their knowledge and experience, 
their entire freedom, and their combined energy can devise. 
The business of university faculties is teaching. It is not 
legislation, and it is not administration — certainly not 
beyond the absolute necessities. There is just complaint 
because the necessities of administration take much time 
from teaching. It lessens the most expert and essential 
work which the world is doing. It seldom enlarges op- 
portunity or enhances reputation. It is true that teachers 
have great fun legislating, but it is not quite certain that, 
outside of their specialties, they will ever come to conclu- 
sions, or that, if they do, their conclusions will stand. The 
main advantage of it is the relaxation and dissipation they 
get out of it. That is great. And, in a way, it may be as 
necessary as it is great. Of course teachers could not endure 
it if they were always to conduct themselves out of the 
classroom as they do in it. Perhaps others would also have 
difficulty in enduring it. They are given to disorderliness 
and argumentation beyond any other class who stands 
so thoroughly for doing things in regular order. It is not 
strange. It is the inevitable reaction, — what some of them 
would call the 'psychological antithesis. Nor is it to be 



226 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

repressed or regretted, for it adds to the effectiveness and 
attractiveness of the most effective and attractive people 
in the world. All this is often particularly true of the 
past masters in the art. No wonder that Professor North, 
who taught Greek for sixty years at Hamilton College, — 
"Old Greek," as many generations of students fondly 
called him, — wrote in his diary that it would have to be 
cut in the granite of his tombstone that he " died of faculty 
meetings," for he was sure that some day he would drop 
off before one would come to an end. 

University policies are not to be settled by majority vote. 
They are to be determined by expert opinion. The very 
fact of extreme expertness in one direction is as likely as 
not to imply lack of it in other directions. Experts are no 
more successful than other people in settling things outside 
of their zone of expertness. Within that they are to have 
their way so long as they sustain themselves and the money 
holds out. But the resources are not to be equally divided. 
University rivalries are not to be adjusted by treaties be- 
tween the rivals. More of university success depends upon 
keeping unimportant things from being done in a mistaken 
way than in developing useful policies and pursuing them 
in the correct way. Department experts are to determine 
department policies, college experts college policies, and 
university experts university policies. 

What the President of the United States is to the federal 
Congress, the president of the university is to the board of 
trustees. It has not long been so, because American uni- 
versities are recent creations. When colleges were small, 
when the care of their property was no task, when all of a 
college were of one sect and theology was the main if not 
the only purpose, when there was but one course of study 
and the instruction was only bookish and catechetical, — 
administration was no problem at all. There was nothing 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 227 

to put a strain upon the ship. Even though there was no 
specific responsibility and no delegation of special functions 
with immediate accountability, possessions did not go to 
waste, frauds did not creep in, and injustice and paralysis 
did not ensue. It may easily be so now in the smaller col- 
leges; it cannot be so in the great universities. The at- 
tendance of thousands of students, the enlargement of 
wealth and of the number of students who go to college 
without any very definite aim, the admission of women, the 
more luxurious and complex life, the greater need of just 
and forceful guidance of students, the multiplication of 
departments, the substitution of the laboratory for the 
book, the new and numberless processes, the care of mil- 
lions of property and the handling of very large amounts of 
money, and the continual and complete meeting of all the 
responsibilities which this great aggregation of materials 
and of moral and industrial power owes to the public, have 
slowly but logically, and as a matter of course, developed 
the modern university presidency. It is the centralized and 
responsible headship of a balanced administrative organi- 
zation, with specialized functions running out to all of the 
innumerable cares and activities of the great institution. 
It is the essential office which holds the right of leadership, 
which has the responsibility of initiative, which is charge- 
able with full information and held to be endowed with 
sound discretion, which may act decisively and immediately 
to conserve every interest and promote every purpose for 
which the university was established. 

It may be well to specify and illustrate. Conditions are 
not wholly ideal in a university. Men and women not al- 
together ripe for translation have to be dealt with. Real 
conditions, often unprecedented, have to be met. Not 
only effectiveness within, but decent and helpful relations 
with neighbors, constituents, and the world are to be as- 



228 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

sured. Some authority must be able to do things at once, 
and some word must often be spoken to or for the university 
community. When spoken, it must be a free word, uttered 
out of an ample right to speak. 

An American university may be possessed of property 
worth from three to fifty millions of dollars. This is in 
lands and buildings and appliances and securities. These 
things may be legislated about, but that is not the care of 
them. To keep them from spoliation and make the most 
of them, there must be expert care through a competent 
department, but in harmonious relations with an ever 
present power which has the right and responsibility of 
declaring and doing things. 

The very life of the institution depends upon eliminating 
weak and unproductive teachers, and upon reinforcing the 
teaching body with the very best in the world. Unless there 
is scientific aggressiveness in the search of new knowledge 
some very serious claims must be abandoned and some 
attitudes completely changed. No board ever got rid of a 
teacher or an investigator — no matter how weak or ab- 
surd — except for immorality known to the public. The 
reason why a board cannot deal with such a matter is the 
lack of individual confidence about what to do and of 
individual responsibility for doing nothing. But, with three 
or four hundred in the faculty, the need of attention to this 
vital matter is always present. No board knows where 
new men of first quality are to be found ; no board can con- 
duct the negotiations for them, or fit them into an har- 
monious and effective whole. The man who is fitted for 
this great burden, and who puts his conscience up against 
his responsibility, can hardly be expected to tolerate the 
opposition of an unsubstantial sentiment which would 
protect a teacher at all hazards, or the more subtle com- 
bination of selfish influences which puts personal over and 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 229 

above public interests when the upbuilding of a university 
is the task in hand. 

Not only must the teaching staff be developed, — the 
work must be organized. It must develop a following, 
connect with the circumstances and purposes of a con- 
stituency, and lead as well as it can up to the peaks of 
knowledge. It is not necessary that all universities cover 
the same lines of work or have the same standards. It 
is not imperative that all have the same courses, or 
courses of the same length. It is necessary that all serve 
and uplift their people. But how ? A master of literature 
will say through classical training and literary style; a 
scientist will say through laboratories ; a political economist 
will say through history and figures and logic ; an engineer 
will say through roads and bridges and knowledge of 
materials, and the generation and transmission of power, 
and skill at construction ; and a professional man will say 
through building up professional schools, providing no 
mistake be made about the particular kind of school. Some 
one of wide experience, having a scholar's training and 
sympathies, possessed of a judicial temperament and with 
decisiveness as well, must have the responsibility and the 
initiative of distributing resources justly as between the 
multifarious interests and binding them all into an har- 
monious and effective whole. Difficult as that is, it is not 
the heaviest burden of university leadership. Ideals must 
be upheld and made attractive ; they must be sane ideals 
which appeal to real men, — and not only to old men, but 
to young men. There must be no mistaking of dyspepsia 
for principle, no assumption that character grows only 
when powers fail; but a rational philosophy of life by 
which men may live as well as die. Nor is this all. There 
must be forehandedness. Some one must be charged with 
the responsibility of peering into the future and leading 



230 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

forward. New and yet more difficult roads must be broken 
out. Some one in position to do it must be active in initiat- 
ing things. He must see what will go — and, quite as 
clearly, what will not go. Subtle but fallacious logic — 
and a vast deal of it — must be resisted, greed combated, 
conceits punctured, resources augmented, influences en- 
larged, forces marshaled for practical undertakings, and 
the whole enterprise made to give a steadily increasing 
service to the industrial, professional, political, and moral 
interests of a whole people. 

Then there is the management and guidance of students. 
One may as well complain because this country is a demo- 
cracy as to repine because the sons and daughters of the 
masses want to go to college. There is no ground for 
regret in the fact that our universities are not just like 
some universities over the seas. We have much to learn 
from them, and we are likely to learn much. We have quite 
as much to avoid. It seems too much to expect to work 
un-American ideas, and perhaps loose habits, out of 
American students who study in Europe, when they come 
home. We are different from Europe because of circum- 
stances and political history, because of our spirit and 
outlook. That is reason enough why our universities are 
different from theirs. 

It is useless to question whether all who come to the 
higher educational institutions are wise in coming. They 
are coming. The work will have to be broad enough to 
meet their needs. Nor is it worth while to bewail the fact 
that all who come are not serious students. Their purposes 
are good enough and serious enough according to their 
lights. Their preparation is what has been exacted by the 
university and provided by the high school. Some of them 
have to be pulled up and pushed along, but the process often 
brings out most unexpected results. Students are not all 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 231 

angels, but every student is worth being helped by an angel 
up to an angel's place^ The task is upon the people who 
undertake to manage universities. Students have to be 
directed in companies but dealt with individually. They 
may be directed by a rule : when they break the rule they 
must be dealt with by a man. It must be a man who can 
stand pat for all that ought to inhere in a university ; but 
such a man will get on best if in addition to being able to 
stand pat he is able to like boys ; he is likely to get on still 
better if he was once a rather lively boy himself ; or, at least, 
if he is a kind of man for whom a boy with some ginger in 
him can find it in his heart to have not only considerable 
respect but some regard and admiration. 

This is not saying that college students are to be treated 
like children. It is not implied that they are to be excused 
for being ruffians. Quite the contrary is true. They are 
to be held exactly responsible to law and rule and all well- 
known standards of decent living. There must be less 
viciousness in the life of American universities, or they 
must and ought to suffer seriously for it. It is to be resented 
and punished far more forcefully than it has been. Students 
who get into this kind of thing and persist in staying in 
are to be punished, even to the point of being thrust out, 
and even though it changes the course of their lives and 
breaks the hearts of fathers and mothers. The good of all 
is the overwhelming consideration. A university is to be 
a university and not something else. Of all institutions it 
is to stand for character and ideals. The universities are 
not to be closed and all youth denied their advantages 
because a few abuse their privileges. The punishment of 
the bad, if there are any bad, is the protection of all the 
rest. It is an essential safeguard to safe administration 
and the wholesome living of the crowd. But is it not bet- 
ter to hold all the boys we can from going to the dogs by 



m AMERICAN EDUCATION 

keeping in sympathy and touch with them, than it is to 
encourage them into deviltry through the coldness or the 
downright dullness or nervelessness or cowardliness of an 
administration ? 

The logic of the situation puts this burden upon the 
president, or upon one working with singleness of purpose 
with him. Likely the president cannot deal with all directly, 
but that is no reason why he should not go as far as he may. 
He must assume responsibility for management, giving 
the right turn and inspiration to it. It is essentially an 
executive function. 

So much in reference to routine. The president who only 
follows routine of course falls short. He is to construct as 
well as administer. He must initiate measures which will 
result in larger facilities, in added offerings and enter- 
prises, in searching out new knowledge, in the wider appli- 
cation of principles to work, and not only in the usual but 
in the better training of men and women for distinct use- 
fulness in life. He is not only to see that plans are within 
the limits of revenues, that the physical condition of the 
plant improves, that everything is clean and attractive, 
that the faculty is scientifically productive, that the in- 
struction is exact and the spirit true ; but he is to take the 
steps which will keep the whole organization moving 
ahead. He must adopt and promote and give full credit 
for movements initiated by others when their propositions 
are safe and practicable, — but he must also be alert in 
stopping movements which will not go. 

Perhaps more important than all, the president is to 
declare from time to time the best university opinion con- 
cerning popular movements and the serious interests of the 
state. He must connect the university with the life of the 
multitude, and exert its influence for the quickening and 
guidance of that public opinion which, as Talleyrand said. 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 233 

is more powerful than all the monarchs who ever lived or 
all the laws which were ever declared. 

The unity and security of a university can only be 
assured through accountability to a central office. While 
every one is to have freedom to do in his own way the thing 
he is set to do, so long as his way proves to be a good way, 
the harmony of the whole depends upon the parts fitting 
together and upon definiteness of responsibility and fre- 
quency of accountability. No self-respecting man is going 
to administer a great office, or an office responsible for 
great results, and have any doubts about possessing the 
powers necessary or incident to the performance of his 
work. He will have enough to think of without having 
any doubt upon that subject. There need be no fear of his 
being too much inflated with power. There will be enough 
to take the conceits out of him and keep him upon the 
earth. If he cannot exercise the powers of his great office 
and yet keep steady and sane there is no hope for him, and 
he will speedily come to official ruin. It is not a matter of 
uplifting or of inflating a man, but of getting a man who 
can meet the demands of a great situation. 

Of course, no one can realize the hopes which centre in 
a university presidency without being able to work har- 
moniously with others. There must be true deference to 
the opinions of many and scrupulous recognition of the 
just, though unexpressed, claims of all. But he must never 
forget that administrative freedom is quite as inviolable as 
any other freedom, even in a university. He must mark 
out his official course for himself and bear the responsi- 
bility of it without cavil. He must expect to suffer criticism 
and opposition, even contumely. He cannot expect that 
the work he has to do will make every one happy. It will 
discomfit many. Conditions may easily make a mere com- 
promiser of him. If they do, the waves will speedily close 



,'234 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

over his official remains. Some choice and magnanimous 
spirits will help him ; but he need entertain no doubt that 
there will be plenty more on every side to try out the stufif 
that is in him, and that they will diligently attend to the 
trying out process until enough occurs to convince them 
that his wisdom, his rational conception of his task, his love 
of justice and sense of humor, his constructive planning, 
his independence, and his fearlessness are sufficient to 
prove him worthy of as great an opportunity for usefulness 
and honor as ever comes to any man. 

All this calls for a rare man. He ought, in the first place, 
to be reasonably at peace with mankind and in love with 
youth. He must have the gift of organizing and the quali- 
ties of leadership. He ought to have been trained in the 
universities, not only for the sake of his own scholarship, 
but that he may be wholly at home in their routine and 
imbued with their purposes. He must be moved by public 
spirit as distinguished from university routine or mere 
scholarly purpose. He must be a scholar, — but not neces- 
sarily in literature or science or moral philosophy. It is 
quite as well if it is in law, or engineering, or political 
history. He must be sympathetic with all learning. He 
can no longer hope to be a scholar in every study. He can 
hardly hope to administer such a trust or fill such a post 
without some knowledge of and considerable aptitude for 
law. His sense of justice must be keen, his power of dis- 
crimination quick, his judgment of men and women ac- 
curate; his patience and politeness must give no sign of 
tiring, and the strength of his purpose to accomplish what 
needs to be done must endure to the very end. Yet he must 
determine differences and decide things. He must have 
the power of expression as well as the more substantial at- 
tainments. Beyond possessing sense, training, outlook, 
experience, resistive power, decisiveness, and aggressive- 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENCY 235 

ness, he ought to be a forceful and graceful writer and at 
least an acceptable public speaker. In a word, the presi- 
dent of an American university is bound to be not only 
one of the most profound scholars, but quite as much one 
of the very great, all around men of his generation. 



V 

LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 

The literature bearing on the freedom of teaching in ad- 
vanced schools is plentiful. The discussion has been heated, 
but there is no clamor just now. There has been no 
recent crucifixion without cause. There is no one in the 
stocks. There is no impending trial. There is no ominous 
raven on a bust of the goddess of wisdom above the 
chamber door. Freedom may be discussed with freedom. 
An academic question may be treated in an academic way. 
The development of college and university teaching in 
America makes a surprising and fascinating story. Look- 
ing for the mere statistics bearing upon it, we find none 
of much service to us before 1870, when the reports of 
the bureau of education begin to be available. Even in 
1870 the classification was much less rigid than it has 
since become. In 'that year there were 369 institutions, 
with 3201 teachers and 54,500 students. In 1908 there 
were 573 institutions, 24,489 teachers, and 292,760 stu- 
dents. Rigidly excluding all schools of actual secondary 
grade, all preparatory departments, and all professional 
schools not associated with a university, but including the 
advanced technical schools, there were 464 institutions 
with 21,960 teachers and 265,966 students, — 195,391 men 
and 70,575 women. In 1880 the income of the colleges and 
universities was $2,225,915; in 1890 it was $10,801,918; 
in 1900 it was $26,550,967 ; and in 1908 $66,790,924. In 
1880 the value of buildings and grounds was $48,427,875; 
in 1890 it was $80,654,520; in 1900 it was $154,203,031; 
and in 1908 it was $300,868,081. 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 237 

It is not necessary to remind ourselves liow little even 
these figures really express. To gather and expend this 
money honestly and beneficently has been a task of no 
ordinary difficulty ; but to develop such a great throng of 
uniformly satisfactory college and university teachers in 
this brief time has been practically impc^sible. 

In this single generation all of the essential factors of a 
unique system of university education have developed in 
America. If it is not better than any other, it is better 
for us than any other. It is within bounds to say that there 
is no longer need of forcing students into the foreign life 
which the late President Harper used to lament, in order 
to give them as scholarly instruction as is provided any- 
where in the world. 

We will not deny that, upon the whole, our system is 
different from every other. In this generation the sciences 
compelled the same recognition as the classics, and forced 
their methods upon all the rest. They created colleges 
of their own. The applications of scientific study to the 
constructive and manufacturing industries came and made 
other colleges of their own. The higher education of 
women upon an entire equality with men, and the carry- 
ing of liberal learning into numberless phases of the 
natural activities of women, made the men move around, 
and forced so much moving that some of the wise men of 
the East, with the best intentions and the utmost effort, 
have not yet been able to become quite reconciled to it. 
The imperative needs of the professions, and of a con- 
tinually increasing number of professions, have taken up 
large tracts of university territory because they could not 
be met outside of the university inclosures. To make it 
possible, a great and universal system of middle schools, 
peculiar to the country, had to be estabUshed to connect 
the universities and the elementary schools. And such 



238 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

a system has been so highly developed that it is doing 
more for the larger number of students than the colleges 
did for the smaller number before 1870. 

The free right to get what one wants without submit- 
ting to so much that he does not want, and the liberalized 
methods of invesfigation and instruction, add overwhelm- 
ing and often unmanageable features to the unfolding 
character of American universities. The obvious educa- 
tional advantage, to each college or school, of association 
with other colleges and schools, and manifest economy, 
educational and pecuniary, group them about the same 
campus while they add to the intricacies of life and the 
difficulties of administration. In a word, the offering of 
all there is in learning to all who want it and will fit them- 
selves to come and take it, and the applications of the 
higher learning to every human activity, have become 
the self-assumed and the measurably accomplished task 
of American universities. 

This would not have been attempted, and it could not 
have been realized, but for the political philosophy of the 
country. But the political thinking which inspired the 
undertaking would never have accomplished it without 
putting into it two great factors which are essentially un- 
known to the universities of other lands. One is the 
board of trustees composed of educational laymen, chosen 
for their character, their benevolence, and their experi- 
ence in managing affairs ; and the other is the payment of 
teachers without reference, or often in inverse proportion, 
to the number of students whom they instruct. 

Not many universities in other countries owe their 
being to private benefactions, or to the efforts of a re- 
presentative democracy to work out its theories and prove 
its worth through education. The universities of other 
nations are expressive of the national intelligence and pro- 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 239 

gress, of the national experiences and needs, and of the 
national attitudes and power. Beyond their revenues from 
fees, they are but meagrely supported by government 
funds. Their internal organization and administration 
rest with the educational faculty or the leaders of it; and 
within the ordinary activities of accepted procedure they 
are unhampered. The means of expansion are seldom 
within themselves, however, and the external powers which 
limit their possibilities are themselves limited by social, 
religious, political, and pecuniary conditions, which those 
powers could hardly change if they would, and probably 
would not change if they could. 

No one can fail to note that regularly recurring salary 
warrants and the absence of a system which automatically 
rids an institution qf teachers who do not teach what is 
wanted, or in the way wanted, have a very decisive bear- 
ing upon the freedom and the expansion of universities. 
But the direct bearing of the board of trustees upon the 
life and growth of a university, while no less potential, 
is not quite so obvious. 

An English or German university professor has only 
amazement at the presence of a lay court of last resort 
in the government of an American university. He holds 
it to be a limitation upon university freedom and a dese- 
cration of very holy ground. On the contrary, it brings 
into the affairs of a university a factor which makes for 
freedom, and particularly for growth. Standing for donors 
in time past and in time to come, no matter whether the 
donors be individuals or a state, the trustees come into 
sympathy with the teaching, and add the factor which 
gives the institution very complete independence. Ordi- 
narily composed of men or women of representative char- 
acter, the board of trustees regulates the business affairs 
of the institution, and holds the confidence of the public 



240 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

concerning its needs. They are themselves sorely per- 
plexed about its instructional and research work, but after 
a year or two they realize that they have limitations of their 
own, and then matters run smoothly enough. The con- 
stant presence in university councils of representatives of 
the external world, to which the institution must look for 
support of every kind, and of which it must be a part if 
it is to give back an acceptable intellectual service, doubt- 
less goes further than anything else to explain the wholly 
unparalleled advance of higher learning in this country 
during the last generation. 

However the matter analyzes, and whatever the explana- 
tion, these American universities are the finest illustrations 
of human power and human reason and human freedom, 
working together for beneficent ends, which the minds 
and hearts of men and women have brought about. They 
pursue their great courses, controlled by both centripetal 
and centrifugal forces, as freely as a planet revolves about 
its sun. They exemplify free government in its most re- 
fined form because a real university will be free any- 
where, and here a university is in the midst of the freest 
government in the world. They stimulate every human 
interest and respond to every rational demand. Their 
very existence is wrapped up in their freedom. They at- 
tract munificent gifts of money and affection because they 
are free to administer them for the enlargement of human 
efficiency and good will. But their power is in their free- 
dom to resist as well as in their freedom to do. Their 
moral forces are energized, and their spiritual aims quick- 
ened, because they are free enough to resist mere eccle- 
siasticism. They enrich the rich through intellectual asso- 
ciation with the poor, and the poor through the same 
association with the rich. In their affairs men and women 
find the places to which they are entitled, and are thrust 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 241 

out of tlie places which they lack the moral and intellectual 
right to hold. The semester examinations are no more 
inexorable than the sentiment of the campus. Always 
surrounded by politics in a state of eruption, they easily 
defy political intrusion, and are expected to refuse to pro- 
mote any political end. Giving instruction in every study, 
they try out educational values through processes which 
are imrelenting and by standards which will not give way. 
They make their own organization, they administer their 
own estate, they hold the right of initiative as to every 
undertaking. They may refuse as well as accept, and they 
have within themselves the men and women, the powers 
and the means, of steadily enlarging their reach and of 
continually enriching their lives and their work. In sane 
and unselfish hands, guided by scholarship and by moral 
sense, they grow large because they accord with the pre- 
vailing opinions of the Republic, and their very enlarge- 
ment, as well as their learning, makes for the freedom of 
the truth. 

Happily something occurs now and then to remind us 
that these universities are very human institutions. They 
are in the world: the people who are making them great 
are not yet ripened for translation. Their officers and 
teachers have been gathered quickly, and opportunity 
acquired suddenly is often misused. In his inexperience 
and enthusiasm, particularly in his unfamiliarity with the 
thinking and the pace of the Mississippi Valley, a young 
professor from New York might forget that the intellectual 
capital of the ages may exceed the brief output of a 
New York, a German, or an English school. And am- 
bition, vaulting ambition, may impel a mere human to 
overlook the need of time, labor, and the forgetfulness of 
self by which academic preference may be secured or 
held when conferred. 



242 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Academic freedom rests upon the same principles as 
political freedom; but it rests upon other principles also. 
Formal law is an insufl&cient basis for academic freedom. 
Mere inclination cannot prevail in a university so much 
as it may outside of it. The associations of the academic 
body are freer than those in the civic state. The propriety 
and the possibility of it come from the clearer under- 
standing of freedom and the surer capacity for it. It rests 
not upon legal obligation so much as upon generosity; 
not so much upon possibility and opportunity as upon 
the subordination of self to the atmosphere of the place 
and the common good. 

Academic freedom is not for the sake of the teacher; 
it is for the sake of the truth. Scientific truth goes further 
than civic truth or social truth. The puritan doctrine 
that he vsrho hears untruth or partial truth, and fails to 
rebuke it, participates in it, has never prevailed, and ought 
not to prevail in the civic state or in social life. All of the 
truth about the mere incidents of life happily does not 
at all times have to be spoken. Untruth about mere mat- 
ters of opinion does not always have to be corrected. But 
the main function of academic freedom is the unlocking of 
scientific truth. There can be no academic freedom which 
is opposed to it. Scientific truth invites and stands the 
last analysis. There can be no compromise about it. 
Scholarship covets an opposition which reveals misap- 
prehension or gives added significance and strength to 
the truth. The acceptance of alleged truth without evi- 
dence is bad enough in a university, but not quite so bad 
as the self-interest and conceit which necessarily protect 
it in the name of academic freedom. Academic freedom 
which is self-seeking more than truth-seeking is mere 
license and cannot live in the academic atmosphere. For- 
tunately, it is governed by a higher law. It is an attribute 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 243 

of normal lives. One who cannot safely exercise it may 
not have it ; and from one who can exercise it safely it can- 
not be withheld. It goes with one who not only can ap- 
preciate his obligations to a human institution, — to its 
donors, its officers, its teachers, its students, and its 
graduates, — but can also appreciate the responsibilities 
of that institution to the constituency it is bound to serve, 
and to the world it is bound to enlighten and make better ; 
and it departs from one who is so academically abnormal 
as really to put his mere liberty of personal movement 
above the institution which gives him his opportunity and 
above the truth which he engages to set free. 

Universities are very great, and very complex, and very 
human organizations. They have to care for property, 
they have to handle much money, and they are obliged to 
account for what they do in very worldly fashion. They 
must break out new roads, and they must equip them- 
selves with a great array of educational implements; they 
must lay hold of rational educational theories, and they 
must have a superior knowledge of educational values. 
That has to be done through experts and teachers, for 
whom universities have to assume responsibility. 

The freedom and the accountability have to balance 
each other, or there can be no harmony and efficiency; 
and without these there can be no internal enthusiasm and 
no external confidence and growth. It all depends upon 
a true educational spirit which enriches itself by giving, 
and upon a balanced organization which assumes respon- 
sibility without limiting educational opportunity. 

Our great American universities, above any others in 
the world, are forced to the necessity of discrimination. 
Their very lives depend upon it, and their peril is in the 
lack of men who can discriminate with justice and confi- 
dence, and who will not be turned from doing it by falla- 



244 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cious theories about freedom. Not only because of their 
youth, and their rapid growth, and the fixed compensations 
of their teachers, and their permanent tenures, but because 
of the universal ambitions and the intellectual traits of the 
country, they are at all times encompassed with difficult 
and serious questions; and they cannot hope to meet the 
expectations and gather the confidence of the country 
unless individuality is made to respect organization, while 
organization is moved by the academic spirit and responds 
to educational opportunity. 

There are some spiritual educationists who seem to 
think that Garfield was assuming to describe a university 
when he said that a log with Mark Hopkins on one end 
and a student on the other would make one. He was doing 
nothing of the kind. His fine imagination was paying a 
fine compliment to his fine old college president. If there 
is one in a university who permits such an ideal to beat 
against the imperative factors of organization, it would 
be well for himself and perhaps for the rest of the world if 
he would go out and find a log, impress a student into his 
experiment, pass his hat for sustenance, and work his ideal 
out to its beggarly conclusion. 

If there are minor disadvantages, they have to go with 
the superior advantages of organization. The mighty 
results of coiSperative life and effort far outweigh any 
sweets which the recluse may gather by himself. The intel- 
lectual and the moral, the civic and the legal, advance has 
come through yielding the mere independence of self to the 
advantage of living together. 

The trend of the world is not in the wrong direction. 
Individualism, the opportunity of selfishness to have its 
own sweet way, will have to reckon with organization 
inside, as outside, of universities. Organization protects 
against want, and associates thinking with fact ; it energizes 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 245 

intellectual productivity, and gives scholarship its real 
opportunity. The laws of society and of organization will 
have to prevail. The organization, as well as the individual, 
has rights, and a university invades no sound principle 
when it maps out its own course, builds its own character, 
gets the best it can in scholarship and in teaching, loses 
no just opportunity to reinforce its strength, holds the good 
of all above the interest of one, insists upon good citizen- 
ship in the democracy of learning, and gives the world the 
benefit of it. 

There are some things about which academic freedom 
must be apprehensive. Self-seeking must go out at once. 
Manoeuvring for promotion or for pay, combining to con- 
trol policies, and agitating to limit the freedom of any 
other officer or teacher in the institution, must lay no claim 
to academic freedom. Even a little of this is exceedingly 
repugnant to truth. If one will resort to it he must abide 
the result without any thought of being a martyr. 

The choice of studies in a university is not wholly free. 
Certain studies are required to be taken before others 
may be. What shall be required is often a matter of 
opinion and it may be a means of abuse. It might happen 
that the weaker a teacher is the more preference he must 
have in the requirements. There are tariffs in university 
schedules as well as schedules in government tariffs. The 
arranging of schedules for favor or for monopoly is no 
more within academic policy than within the political 
policy of the country. If one will indulge in it he must take 
his academic life in his hand and abide the issue. 

"Sensationalism has no rights of any kind in a university. 
Yet we must have learned that it is not to be kept out by 
the saying. Novelty of theme or of statement, suited to 
newspaper exploitation and to personal notoriety, is as 
repugnant to the traditions, the philosophic basis, the 



246 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

moral sense, and the freedom of a university, as illiteracy 
is a menace to government in a democratic state, or as 
greed is repugnant to fellowship in a philanthropic guild. 
One cannot be allowed to propagate his vagaries at the 
expense, upon the time, and in the name, of a university 
that would like to be thought prudent and rational. If one 
wants to be a professor of myths and ghosts, he ought to 
go out in the woods and pursue his inquiries on his own 
time and in the most appropriate place. Everything lack- 
ing complete intellectual sanity and sincerity is not only 
without the bounds of the academic privilege, but is a 
menace to academic freedom. 

It has transpired in academic experience that one has 
had credit for the work which another has done, or has 
transferred the responsibility for his own shortcomings. 
This may happen without wrongful intent, through subtle 
reasoning, or lack of reasoning, upon a subject about 
which one's mind is exclusive and intense. It is surely 
outlawed in a university, and it must be settled by the 
ordinary processes and standards of intellectual integrity. 

The processes of learning must operate freely, but they 
cannot extend to every field of inquiry in one institution. 
There is no academic right to force an institution into un- 
dertakings it cannot afford, or to extend processes once 
started to lengths which are extravagant in time and 
money, and unpromising in result. And there is no actual 
hardship about it, because experience shows that the man 
and the institution who gratify inclinations without refer- 
ence to the material cost, are less productive in new 
scientific truth than those who are compelled to square 
their work with the usual limitations upon human conduct. 

There is less difficulty about all this in the field of the 
physical sciences than of the mental sciences. A univer- 
sity which would call back an investigator who is any- 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 247 

where in the region of a grain of new truth in nature, would 
cease to be a university, and the moment it was done the 
doors of every university in the world would swing wide 
open to that investigator. But when we come to the philo- 
sophical sciences, to matters of opinion, we shall have to 
say that, while the right of individual theory and expression 
is free, the right of place, and of association, and of time, 
and of opportunity, is not without its very decisive limita- 
tions. 

There is scarcely an institution of higher learning in 
this country in which the Christian religion is not a matter 
both of philosophy and of feeling. It is expressed in the life 
and functions of the institutions. Would the denunciation 
of Christianity and the propagation of some other religion 
be within the academic privilege in an institution founded 
upon, and nurtufed by, Christianity? There are differ- 
ing philosophical attitudes, and different understandings 
of history, concerning Christianity. Would an interpreta- 
tion of history and a theory of religion consonant with 
Protestantism be within the academic privilege at the 
Catholic University at Washington, and would such inter- 
pretation and such theory be without such privilege at 
Yale .? 

All of our higher institutions are chartered by, and many 
of them are supported by, a democratic state. Would the 
contention that democracy is a vicious system, or that all 
government is an improper constraint upon the governed, 
be within the rights of free teaching in one of these insti- 
tutions ? May theory pull down the roof that shelters it ? 
May a mere doctrinaire overturn the fundamental political 
philosophy which has been worked out in this country by 
hard thinking, by consecration, and by blood ? 

Even Germany does not allow that ; and it may well be 
doubted whether the United States will ever go, or ought 



248 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to go, as far as Germany does in reference to what teach- 
ers teach and what students do in the name of "scholar- 
ship," and without reference to the balanced character and 
moral fibre which we hold to be vital to the genuineness 
and the worth of scholarship. 

There is little difficulty about what shall be taught in the 
schools, or the freedom with which it shall be taught, until 
we come to topics which, for the time being, are subjects 
of party warfare. And there is no ground for difficulty 
about those if teachers observe the reasonable proprieties 
of the teacher's office. That office is not that of the advo- 
cate. It is not that of the agitator. It is not that of the 
executor. It is not that of the legislator. It certainly is 
not that of the dictator. It is that of the judge. Its function 
is to ascertain and enlarge and expound the truth. It must 
do that judicially. It may be well to observe that there is 
no other judicial power in the organization of a university 
than what inheres in the essential attributes of its officers 
and teachers. The university has the powers of determina- 
tion, and expression, and propagation, and expansion, 
wholly within itself. Beyond all other human institutions 
the American university is without limitations. There is 
no court to say that any educational policy of the corpora- 
tion is in conflict with the Constitution, and therefore void 
and of no effect. And we are easily able to "construe" all 
formal words that relate to education in ways which easily 
paralyze the profane minds which are not acclimated to 
the atmosphere of the universities. 

Upon what may be called "live questions" we are de- 
pendent upon the judicial sense, the good breeding, the 
common sense, the sense of the proprieties, the sense of 
humor, of the teacher. Happily, he fails us in only one 
case in a thousand. In the exceptional instance the sense 
of others comes to his rescue. There is no limitation what- 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 249 

ever upon the sincere effort of such a one to ascertain the 
truth or to express his conclusions as to what is the truth. 
The inteUigence of the country would sharply resent any 
interference with such effort or such expression within 
the well-understood conventionalities of the professorial 
ofiSce. 

But as there are conventionalities which one must ob- 
serve in order to be a judge, so there are those which one 
must observe in order to be a teacher, certainly in order 
to be a university professor. For common example, a 
professor of economics may believe in international com- 
mercial freedom of trade. It is a mere matter of opinion. 
He has the clear right to express his opinions; but surely 
he has no right to enforce them upon students without 
telling them of the objections and the arguments upon 
the other side. Indeed, an intellectually honest man in 
such a situation will be specially careful to elucidate all 
the contentions of those who believe in protection, because 
he does not agree with them. One can have no valid ob- 
jection to a professor being a free trader, or object to his 
telling students the reasons why. But one has abundant 
reason for objecting to his hiding from students the argu- 
ments which support the policy of protection, and to his 
enforcing his partisan view against mere youth with the 
ponderous solemnity and the unfailing certainty of a mili- 
tary execution. 

Again, there are limitations upon the time and place 
for the proper exercise of the professorial, as of the judi- 
cial, office. These limitations aid rather than destroy the 
mental balance. One who would appear upon the hustings 
and say, "I am a judge, I have been elected, I have 
taken the oath of office, I know the law and the right of 
this matter is thus and so," would divest himself of all 
right to respect, and his office of all right to prerogative 



250 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and power. He must sit upon the bench; he must have 
jurisdiction; he must have an issue properly joined; he 
must give the parties in interest their day in court; he 
must hear the contending views patiently; he must de- 
termine only what he has the right to decide, and he must 
do that without bias, with deliberation, and with dignity, if 
he expects to give potency and effect to his judicial office. 
The professor, no less than the judge, is in quest of the 
right and of the truth. To have result, or to have weight, 
his quest must be within the domain of his professorship, 
must be pursued with an open mind, and must be con- 
ducted with a scrupulous regard for the amenities of his 
office. Standing for his science, and for the truth, and for 
the university which gives him his right and his opportu- 
nity, he may reasonably be expected to refrain from ir- 
responsible conduct which, in the judgment of responsible 
authority, is not compatible with either. 

But suppose he is unable to see that it is not the freedom 
of teaching, but only the misconception of the teacher, 
which is involved. If he is worthy of a university, the 
matter will correct itself in time, and more than the 
requisite time is always allowed ; if unworthy, he will assert 
misuse, and have things said, and invoke sympathy, and 
perhaps enjoy martyrdom. He will have the newspapers 
and educational journals largely to himself. The presidents 
and trustees of colleges and universities will doubtless have 
enough to answer for, but there is reason to believe that it 
will be well atoned for by the truths they might have told 
but considerately kept to themselves. But shall there be no 
determination? There are those who say, "Let it all go; 
it is the price we must pay for academic freedom." The 
price may be wholly unnecessary, or far too high. May one 
promulgate as truth mere opinions which are not sus- 
tained by the body of his colleagues in this branch of 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 251 

study ? May he proclaim to the public as discovered truth 
that which is still hidden? May he propagate partisan 
views and possible untruth in his classroom for all time 
and without hindrance? May he employ sensational 
methods to attract attention? May he assume to speak 
authoritatively upon subjects foreign to his own ? May he 
bring ridicule upon his university by going to the world 
upon propositions about which he has had no experience ? 
May he outrage the rights and reasonable expectations of 
students, and subject donors and trustees and colleagues 
and alumni to humiliation ? May he do all this and more, 
and there be no proper remedy ? The sense of the world, 
even of the academic world, will not assent to it. If 
honest, he should be given time, and consideration, and 
perhaps opportunity for a "call" to some other place. 
There will be some solution. If his intellectual integrity 
limps, let him have the admonition of the saints and the 
prayers of the congregation. Paul adjured the Thessalo- 
nians that they should " study to be quiet," and a sermon 
on that text might be preached to him. If nothing else 
avails, the sound discretion of the board of trustees should 
be exercised. 

Our democracy is bringing out a type of university 
peculiar to the country. There can be no university without 
scientific teaching. There can be no great university with- 
out teaching that is scholarly, free, and aggressive. But 
there will never be a university strongly sustained in this 
country in which balanced sense does not combat unsci- 
entific teaching. 

And we may safely go further and say that an American 
university must be the home of other things than mere 
scientific research. An American university will not be 
projected in a groove; it will not be based upon a single 
idea; it will not consent to serve a single interest. It will 



252 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

have to give free play to the poHtical philosophy of the 
nation. It will have to stand for character as well as 
scholarship. It will have to be the conscience as well as 
the brains of its constituent factors. Opposing points 
of view are vital to the unlocking of the whole truth, and 
opposing intellectual forces will have to enter into the 
training in moral sense, and manliness and womanliness, 
which the Republic claims for her college youth. There 
is more danger to the future of some American universities 
through the fettering of administrative than of academic 
freedom. And there will never be a representative Ameri- 
can university, with virile and growing power in it, where 
the forces which are essential to self-expansion and to its 
representative character are not all present, are not held 
in common respect, and do not balance one another in 
rational equilibrium. 

Those forces are the public, the donors, the trustees, 
the president, the teachers, the students, and the alumni. 
Each is to have its independence. Each is to be aggressive. 
None is to trench upon the independence of any other. 
Each is to regard the fundamental principles and the im- 
perative limitations of cooperative and organized effec- 
tiveness. There is no cause for conflict which is not alien 
to a university, and which in an institution worthy of the 
name will not in due time and by natural processes be 
pushed into its subordinate and impotent place or forced 
out of the fellowship. In a university, as nowhere else, 
selfishness defeats its own ends. Generosity and truth 
fit together, and where they join forces learning will be 
uplifted, and multitudes of men and women will gather 
about its home. 

The freedom of American sentiment, the history and 
traditions, the temperament and ambitions, the moral fibre 
and sense of humor, the indifference to hurts and confi- 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM 253 

dence in the future, the feeling of common proprietorship 
and the exactions of common sense, are all mighty forces 
in the evolution of a university which can endure in the 
United States. 

President Hyde, of Bowdoin, in one of the best maga- 
zine articles to be found in the literature on this subject, 
sounds one note that seems discordant. Speaking of the 
donor, he says, "He may give or he may not give. After he 
has given he has no rights." One can hardly think that 
he meant to say that a man with millions, which he can 
never use except by giving, is quite as free not to give 
as he is to give ; and after one has given, his rights to the 
realization of his expectations are surely as fixed as law 
and as sacred as honor can make them. Doubtless the 
intent was to say that we may accept or we may not accept. 
A university will not accept an absurd bequest, and it is 
powerless to accept an unconscionable one. But obviously 
the best practical realization of a donor's thought is vital 
in a country where universities have grown out of benefi- 
cence, in a way and in a measure wholly new to educational 
history in the world. 

The teacher who seeks and uplifts the truth will have 
in this country a measure of freedom for the accomplish- 
ment of his end larger than that of any other country. 
If he cannot do it in one place, there will be plenty of 
other places where he may. If one man opposes him, there 
will be plenty more to give him a helping hand. The 
measure of his support will be in very close proportion 
to the sincerity of his purpose and the intellectual sanity 
and integrity of his effort. But we can accept no theory con- 
cerning the relations, no rule concerning the treatment 
of a teacher, which does not make him a well-rounded, 
independent, manly, attractive character, who asks no 
special privilege and avoids no ordinary obligation. 



254 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

The just freedom of the student is as sacred as that of 
any one else in the university. Like all others, he is re- 
sponsible to law and order. If he violates the penal code 
he should sujGFer its penalties. If he dishonors the institu- 
tion, he should be excluded from it. The modern enlarge- 
ment of his freedom has made him a better and a stronger 
character than he used to be. In his quest for learning he 
is just as free as the teacher. The freedom of the student 
is often the main assurance of the virility and balance of the 
teaching. He must know that somewhere in the institu- 
tion there is a court of last resort that will give him justice, 
no matter who is involved. 

And any course which would repress the free word of 
the alumni in the affairs of a university would certainly 
be a fatuous one. Of course, they may not have thrown off 
their student feelings or departed altogether from the 
student point of view, but their word may be no worse 
on that account; and whether it is or not, the heartbeats 
of the great organization will quicken a little when the 
word of the "old grads" is spoken. 

If the guardianship of law, through the protection of 
powers and the enforcement of limitations by the judiciary, 
is the greatest contribution of America to the science of 
politics, then the guardianship of truth in every branch of 
human study, through the amplitude of powers, the bal- 
ance of forces, the freedom of procedure, and the limitations 
upon mere human inclinations, in American universities, 
may yet prove to be the greatest gift which America will 
make to world education. 

There are no limitations upon learning in the United 
States. But there will never cease to be limitations upon 
men and women who are promoting learning. Limitations 
are what earnest men need and what great men impose 
upon themselves. University courtesy may be a hindrance 



LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM ^55 

to the truth and a curse to teaching. When academic free- 
dom is permitted to further the merely human inchna- 
tions, it is more than Hkely to thwart the interests of learn- 
ing. The truth will have to be unlocked and transmitted 
through diligence, and patience, and self-abnegation, and 
love of men, and love of the truth; and the compensations 
for the service will have to be in the gold coin of heaven. 



VI 

CO-EDUCATION 

It can hardly be denied that the policy of educating 
boys and girls, young men and young women, and grown 
men and women together, is overwhelmingly popular in 
America. 

In the elementary schools it is practically universal and 
excites no comment. It is true that there are rare excep- 
tions to this in two or three eastern cities, due to accidental 
conditions, such as the location or structure of school- 
houses, or possibly they may be the survivals of the feeble 
beginnings in the public school system, when there was 
doubt about the public education of boys and certainty 
that it was not proper for the public to educate girls at all. 

Practically the same conditions prevail as to the public 
secondary schools. Here, too, the exceptions seem to be 
due to special circumstances, such as the survival of 
primitive efforts, or dense population and public con- 
venience, or the opening of manual training or other 
schools in which but one sex would be mainly interested, 
and have but little bearing upon the broad question of the 
wisdom of co-education. 

In the higher institutions the exceptions are much more 
numerous, but comprise considerably less than half of the 
whole number. 

In 1870 the men's colleges comprised 69.3 per cent of 
the whole number for men and for men and women to- 
gether; in 1880 they had fallen to 48.7 per cent; in 1890 
to 34.5 per cent; in 1900 to 29 per cent. 

Allusion has been made to early conditions which stood 



CO-EDUCATION 257 

in the way of girls in the early primary and then in the 
early secondary schools. Democracy triumphed over those 
conditions long ago. Similar and even more stubborn 
obstacles stood in the way of collegiate training for women. 
The common thought of the whole world was against it. 
The number of colleges exclusively for men is accounted for 
by the fact that they were established before there was any 
serious thought of giving college privileges to women at all. 
The decline in the relative number of men's colleges is due 
in some part to the admission of women to the older institu- 
tions, but in larger part to the founding of new institutions 
for both in the newer and freer states. Democracy has 
broken through tenacious conditions in the East ; she has 
had her free way in the West. 

The education of the mass has not been and is not yet a 
world policy. Wherever it has come to be a national policy 
it has been made so by the political power of the common 
people. This is none the less true when it has been grudg- 
ingly conceded by an autocratic government or an aristo- 
cracy of wealth, because of the apprehension of danger 
from the ignorant crowd. The power of woman was not 
recognized as early as that of man, and opportunities, from 
the lowest to the highest, for her enlightenment have 
lagged behind those for man. 

The reasons for the historic evolution of the schools are 
obvious enough. In the long years while physical force 
fixed the boundaries and settled the course of empires and 
whole peoples blindly submitted to the rule of one man or 
of a few men, and the right of absolutism descended by 
inheritance, there was reason enough why the mass should 
not be trained to anything save effectiveness in battle, and 
why even the intellectual quickening which might come 
out of that poor privilege should be denied to women. It 
was natural enough that such conditions should make 



258 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

woman the mere supporter and subordinate, the toy and 
task-bearer of man. It was logical and convenient enough 
to continue and establish in the law of the land the sub- 
ordinate status which these conditions had given her even 
after legislative assemblages came to be a necessity with 
princes, and the more or less comfortable fashion of having 
laws of some kind forced its way upon the society of the 
polite. 

Our English forefathers, from whom we derived the 
sources of our law, fixed the status of woman in their 
law, and so in ours, in a way which retarded the develop- 
ment of her rights in this country. It is comforting to know 
that the world was relative then as now, and that they 
had advanced even further than the forefathers of other 
peoples at the time when English law began to form. How 
far they had advanced is seen from the assurance in the 
Magna Charta which was wrung from the king "in the 
meadow called Runingmede," that " a widow may remain 
in the mansion of her husband forty days after his death," 
and that "no widow shall be destrained to marry herself 
so long as she has a mind to live without a husband, but 
she shall give security that she will not marry without our 
consent." If the men looked after the women in such mat- 
ters as marriage and property, it is interesting to note that 
they looked after themselves quite as well, for they also 
made King John promise " that no man shall be taken or 
imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman for the death of 
any other than her husband." 

About the only right our foremothers had was the right 
to live and be our foremothers. Indeed, the law knew 
nothing of them beyond keeping their marriage within the 
control of the king, or the lord of the manor, until they 
took the step which conferred upon us the high privilege 
of being here. After that if by any chance they had personal 



CO-EDUCATION 259 

property, it became the husband's absolutely. So with 
real estate; he could alienate it by deed or by will. Man 
and wife were in no sense equal before the law. Their 
lives were legally merged in one, but the one was not a new 
creation: the one remained the life of the man. And the 
law made him about as troublesome to her after he was 
dead as when he was alive. If he left any property when he 
died she could claim the income of one third of it, and no 
more, during the ordinarily brief time while she remained 
his widow. If she had brought the property to him when 
she married him, or if they had accumulated it together, it 
made no difference. If he failed to sell it or give it away in 
his lifetime, or neglected to dispose of it by will, the law 
came in at his death and considerately corrected his over- 
sight in his interest. She could not make a will at all. He 
could give or will her property to his relatives. Her ser- 
vices and earnings were his. She had no right of control 
over the children, except in subordination to him; the 
income of their labor, as well as of their mother's, was his. 
He had the right to chastise not only them, but their 
mother as well. Often the man was so sane that he did not 
think of going to the limits of this insane law ; and some- 
times the woman was so strong that he considerately 
waived his technical right for reasons which were both 
obvious and conclusive. 

So long as all this could persist, no one, not even woman 
herself, could think of the education of woman. And it did 
persist until democracy, without chart or plan or under- 
standing of what the end would be, merely obeying the 
conscience and using the force of the mass, bore down the 
unbroken traditions of a thousand years. Our often dep- 
recated legislating habit is entitled to the credit of it. The 
statutes of our many states, a little here and a little there, 
copying and advancing upon one another, have made the 



260 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

legal rights of woman about the same as those of man. 
Where not fully equal they will yet be made so. 

No one can doubt the cause of this, for wherever de- 
mocracy has had any development in the world, even 
under autocratic or aristocratic forms, there the rights of 
women have been enlarged. The opportunity has been so 
much larger and the advance so much stronger in America 
than in any other land that we have been conspicuous in 
this world movement ; but the movement is on all over the 
world. It is one of the great strides to the high destiny of 
the race. Ill-advised selfishness was able to keep the mass 
in ignorance of natural rights through long, long years, but 
the dawn of a glorious day came at last, and the sun of 
promise is now well up in the heavens. 

Naturally there has been some illogical reasoning, some 
irrational misconceptions about it all. Confusion about per- 
sonal rights and public duties has arisen. Because a wo- 
man has the right and should have the opportunity to 
make the most of herself it does not follow that she should 
serve in the army or the jury box. It would be a brutal 
view that because she should have the same opportunities 
as man for moral and intellectual advancement, she should 
be made to stand while a man sits in a street car, or in any 
other way bear a man's part in public places. The opening 
of the advanced schools to woman has nothing to do with 
imposing the franchise upon her. 

Woman is by her very nature fitted for certain functions 
and man for certain other functions in the social economy. 
Each class of functions and the inherent rights of each sex 
claim as a right the best that the schools can give. But it 
does not follow that each is to bear the same burden. The 
essence of government is protection. Voting, serving in the 
legislature, is sharing in government. It is a burden, not a 
right. When it comes to bearing burdens, man is to do 



CO-EDUCATION 261 

what he can do best and woman what she can do best. 
Man is the natural protector, the natural voter. Physio- 
logical and social considerations come in. Because men 
do not always vote as safely as they ought, it does not follow 
that women would do it any better. There is some reason 
for fear that they might not do it as well. Because a few 
men and a few women want to change the political order 
of things, and possibly the natural order of things, it by 
no means follows that it should be done. When the ma- 
jority of the most substantial women want to take up the 
burden of managing government, the majority of the men 
will doubtless be willing. It is a matter of expediency, and 
if that time ever comes the men may agree to it. 

But natural rights are not to depend even upon major- 
ities. They are to inhere in every one and be enforceable 
by every one regardless of sex. Participation in govern- 
ment is not necessary in order that woman may secure her 
rights. Sufficient proof of this is found in the fact that 
the widest range of civic and political rights conferred upon 
woman in all the world, or in all time, has been given in 
this country, not by princes, or by judges, but by the plain, 
common, blundering men. But they do not always blunder. 
Acting in the mass, and after discussion, they do not often 
blunder. They have not blundered in this matter, for in 
the social economy women must bear responsibilities quite 
as important to the common good, and claiming quite as 
high an order of moral and intellectual aptitude, as the 
burden of protection against the external and internal 
enemies of the social order which logically falls upon men. 

Because in the economy of our social and political life 
woman must necessarily have the same educational rights 
as man, co-education has become the overwhelming edu- 
cational policy of the country. Those rights can be com- 
pletely secured in no other way. It may not be necessary 



262 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

that men and women shall study the same things or recite 
in the same classes, but they must have the right to do so. 
Whether women will take the right is not to be decided for 
them by men. They are to decide it for themselves. Con- 
ditions and influences will aid the decision by giving re- 
wards when it is wise, and inflicting failures when it is 
mistaken. Private or local institutions may appeal to a 
class and find constituents. No harm results. But the great 
universities, even those upon endowment foundations, are 
not private or local institutions. Their own wise course 
has taken them out of that list. Public institutions, either 
those supported by public moneys, or which have become 
public by reason of long life, wide constituencies, and 
splendid public service, cannot be at odds with the ac- 
cepted political theories and the common educational pol- 
icy of the country. 

The extent to which provision for popular education, 
primary, secondary, and higher, has followed closely upon 
self-confidence in democratic life is an interesting study. 
The way in which educational equality has accompanied 
the extension of political rights to women is no less interest- 
ing. A hundred years ago such discussion as there was 
concerning the education of girls related not to the colleges, 
but to the elementary schools. The Massachusetts town 
which is now the seat of one of the foremost woman's 
colleges in the country voted in town meeting that it would 
not be proper to use public moneys to give schooling to 
girls. In Boston girls were not admitted to the public 
schools at all until 1789, and for only half time until 1828. 
The first high schools were opened before the public was 
accustomed to anything beyond the rudiments for girls, 
and were for boys alone. When a high school was opened 
for girls they came in such numbers that the mayor was 
simply paralyzed and closed the school in despair. There 



CO-EDUCATION 263 

was nothing strange about this halting of thought over the 
education of women. It took time to become accustomed 
to the idea. But the idea had to prevail. In the larger 
cities provision was first made for separate secondary 
schools ; when schools were opened in the newer parts of 
these growing cities they were for both sexes. It was so in 
the newer towns of the older states, and universally so in 
the newer states. 

Harvard College was founded before the time when the 
dandies at the court of Charles II thought the women were 
sufficiently educated if they could spell out the recipes for 
puddings and pies, and all of the earlier American colleges 
started before Mrs. John Adams wrote: " Female education 
in the best families goes no further than writing and arith- 
metic, and in some few rare instances music and dancing." 
Of course those colleges were for men alone. And for 
men alone they long continued. But the logic of events 
created a demand for college privileges for women which 
must be met. It was met in four ways : (a) By establishing 
colleges exclusively for women, (6) by opening new institu- 
tions with equal rights for both sexes, (c) by admitting 
women to men's colleges on equal terms, and ((f) by 
setting up annexes or independent women's colleges with 
some form of organic union with the larger universities. 

Some of the women's colleges were the outgrowth of 
seminaries for women established to prepare them for 
teaching, or to prepare them for polite society, before there 
was any thought of real college work for women. Some 
have been established at a later day to meet a definite 
preference. Doubtless it would be distinctly asserted by 
all the women's colleges that they are intended to meet 
the ideas of people who do not want their daughters edu- 
cated in association with men, and prefer that they shall 
have an education of a different kind, or with very different 



264 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

shadings from that which men would have at all. It is a 
matter of preference. Sometimes it is a matter of con- 
venience. Often it is a matter of daughters. In any case 
it is all right. The work is substantial. Much good and 
no harm results. No one resents the exclusiveness. There 
is nothing there that any man wants which he cannot get 
easily elsewhere, unless it is one of the daughters, and he 
gets her if he ought to have her. 

The concessions which the larger universities, accus- 
tomed to the old ways, have made to women are all that 
could have been expected. They are more than have been 
made by the universities in other lands. They are proof 
of the influence of democratic society and of the irresistible 
impulse for educational equality in America. Whether the 
arrangement will long continue, or will go further, whether 
some universities will permanently remain for men and 
some others for women, may well be a subject of con- 
jecture. 

There are a number of institutions of the Roman Cath- 
olic Church which admit only men for reasons peculiar 
to the tenets of that denomination. But by all odds the 
greater number of colleges and universities, save these, 
which were founded in the last generation, afford equal 
privileges for each sex. Leaving out the institutions of the 
Roman Catholic Church, and a very few other denomina- 
tional institutions started very early, it is difficult to find an 
institution of college or university grade west of the AUe- 
ghanies which is not co-educational. 

Higher learning in America will always owe much to 
the different religious denominations for the innumerable 
colleges which they placed all over the public domain while 
American institutional life was really getting upon its feet. 
Many of them were not more than high schools ; and some 
have remained such. But their number was large and 



CO-EDUCATION 265 

their purposes high, and they gathered up the best they 
could find in the pioneer days for the higher intellectual and 
spiritual life. Practically all of them were co-educational. 

With full appreciation of all this, and with no less ap- 
preciation of what private munificence has done for 
higher learning through a small number of conspicuous 
new foundations, it may well be said that by all odds the 
most important factor in the enlargement of college and 
university work in America has been the state universities 
and the institutions founded upon the national land grant 
acts. They are all co-educational. Institutions supported 
by public moneys could not logically discriminate between 
citizens, in educational privileges at least. They came at 
the rise of the tide in public sentiment concerning the 
natural rights of woman, and there was no occasion to 
discriminate against her. Indeed, the great West would 
not permit it. Tax-supported colleges and universities, 
with the best that the common means could provide, and 
equal privileges for all, were the natural and inevitable 
response to that aggressive democratic sentiment which 
prevails everywhere beyond the Alleghanies. 

Too many in the East know little of the strength or the 
import of this mighty manifestation of the common im- 
pulse of really democratic society towards the higher 
learning. It is not a heedless impulse. Equality of op- 
portunity is the very gist of it. Fullness of information 
and freedom of thought are the very soul and spirit of it. 
Work which bears upon the vocations of the people and a 
philosophy which squares with life are the sum and sub- 
stance of it. It was born of mistrust of the ideals and the 
philosophy of private institutions, and it has already had a 
decisive influence in recasting universities established upon 
traditional lines. 

The growth of these institutions is not the least remark- 



266 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

able development of our wonderful country and our 
marvelous times. If anything were needed to settle and 
clinch the matter of absolute educational equality in 
America, and to disprove the dangers or difficulties of co- 
education, this great movement did it. There is nothing like 
a practical demonstration to explode the theories of people 
who know so much that is not so, of things they never 
saw. 

In all of these institutions and in hundreds of other in- 
stitutions, and in all parts of the country, young men and 
women are mingling in perfect and proper freedom. For 
the most part the men and women live in separate homes, 
boarding-houses, clubs, or fraternity houses. Wherever 
the women live by themselves in a club or fraternity 
house, that is, outside of the life of a family, they 
themselves arrange for proper chaperonage. The common 
sentiment of the community exacts this. A university dean 
of women acts as their friend and adviser, but not as their 
superintendent. In work there is equality. Young men and 
women search for the truth in the same library, and tell 
what they have found, or reveal how much they have not 
found, in the same classes. They of course have separate 
gymnasiums, and often naturally prefer separate play- 
grounds. They very commonly go in couples to the ath- 
letic field to see an intercollegiate contest, or to the armory 
on a Saturday afternoon once a month to a military hop, 
or to university events in the evenings. By common consent 
all social functions are arranged for Friday evenings or 
Saturday afternoons and evenings. There are no rules to 
break, and there is no spying to stir indignation. A good 
deal of sense and not much foolishness are manifested in 
it all. 

These young people are quite as safe in this environ- 
ment and atmosphere as in their own homes. All that this 



CO-EDUCATION 267 

atmosphere is doing for them has as much protection in it 
as the uncertain oversight and slender authority of fathers 
and mothers at the age when young manhood and woman- 
hood have arrived. And it has infinitely more incentive 
and inspiration in it. Marriages often follow after college 
days are over, but it is seldom that either party gets a stick 
or a poltroon without being chargeable with notice, for uni- 
versity sentiment has fixed the status of each beyond a per- 
adventure. Ordinarily each will get a sane, substantial, 
true, and hard-working associate ; and ordinarily together 
they will prove to be the best intellectual leaven in the 
neighborhood mass. 

The wisest course in education is inevitably upon lines 
parallel with the highways of Nature. She helps us on our 
way, if we do not cross her tracks. The less of the artificial 
and the unnatural there is in educational work the better. 
It is not uncommon to think some other arrangement than 
the one we have is better, because we know the diflSculties 
of our own organization more completely than those of one 
that is far away or yet untried. 

Of course there are some branches in education which 
appeal to men more than to women, and others which 
appeal to women more than to men. In the smaller col- 
leges the work is of the kind which meets the need of stu- 
dents of both sexes who go to those colleges. In the large 
universities there is sufiiciently wide opportunity for elec- 
tion. The process of natural selection will take more wo- 
men than men to some classes, and more men than women 
to others. Possibly, in cases, some classes will be made 
wholly of women, and others wholly of men. It is all 
right. It is natural. There is nothing artificial about it. 
There is no one to complain, and nothing to complain of. 

The point is that there are no general reasons, at this 
stage of intellectual progress, for the separation of the 



268 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

sexes in education. If either men or women wish to with- 
draw themselves from working jointly with the others, 
either wholly or in part, there is abundant provision for 
their doing so. They are not to force others to do so. 
Much less are a few managers to force all to do so. It is a 
matter of personal preference and individual right. The 
right of the woman to the best there is in college is just as 
inviolable as that of the man, and it cannot be met unless 
she may have the same instruction, if she wants it. Physio- 
logical, psychological, and social difficulties exist only in 
the imagination. It has been proved that intellectual and 
social healthfulness follow the companionship of the sexes 
in a large, even more than in a small, institution. If the 
small colleges choose to keep out either men or women no 
serious wrong or harm follows, for one may easily get else- 
where all that they can offer. If a woman's college, even 
of first prominence, continues to exclude men, it does not 
violate the right of any man, for there are no facilities, and 
there is no teaching there which is not quite equaled in 
the leading universities, unless of a class which none but 
women want. But if the great universities have equipments 
which the women's colleges cannot rival, and if their 
teaching staffs are the very climax of the work of educa- 
tional institutions since the beginning of universities, and 
if women are to be denied these advantages, wholly, or in 
part, it is taking away a substantial right which is theirs 
under all the theories of our government, and which all the 
interests of our democracy loudly demand that they shall 
have. 

In point of intellectual proficiency in co-educational 
institutions there is no noticeable preponderance with one 
sex or the other. Socially they separate into sets very much 
as people ordinarily do. There is a "society" set. The 
numbers are not very large. They manage the social func- 



CO-EDUCATION 269 

tions, dress well, and have a good time. Some of the 
lighter-headed ones get into this set and fall short in the 
examinations, but there are really very few of these. The 
larger number can regard social life and personal attrac- 
tiveness without falling down at the end of the semester, 
and a university owes much to this class of students. Then 
there is a set who may be called the drudges. Life is ter- 
ribly severe with them, and they are indifferent to appear- 
ances. It is not due to want of money so much as to lack 
of home training and of i-ntellectual fibre. Their number is 
happily small also. Between these two stands the great 
body of students, the great middle class, who lead ordi- 
nary lives, do ordinary work, mingle in the ordinary intellec- 
tual and religious associations, keep things balanced, and 
develop a very large number of sane men and women who 
in time transfer the substance which the university did 
not create, but which it developed, to the social, political, 
industrial, professional, and spiritual life of the world. It 
is all very natural, and it is charming and effective be- 
cause it is nature at its very best. 

Perhaps it remains to be said that there are men in the 
universities, and unhappily they are not all among the 
students, who are either woman-haters, or who satisfy their 
code of social ethics by chivalrous attention to women on 
special occasions, and by living like barbarians all the rest 
of the time. They cannot keep up so much artificial 
politeness all the time, and the continuing presence of 
women is an intolerable restraint upon them. Of course 
they will not say this. Perhaps they hardly know it. Hun- 
ger for investigations and discussions which cannot be 
carried on in the presence of women is but a thin disguise 
for the natural tendencies of a learned mountaineer. What 
is scientific is not vulgar, and what is vulgar is not scientific. 
The vulgar has no place in a university. It has no more 



270 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

place in a man's university than in a co-educational uni- 
versity or a woman's college. The man who wants to 
smoke in the midst of educational work, or to swear or 
talk coarsely anywhere, is out of his latitude if in some in- 
conceivable way he has broken into a university; and the 
natural course of democracy and of education is not to be 
turned aside on his account. 

Men and women supplement each other ; each supplies 
the factors in thought and endeavor, in discretion and 
stability, in force and progress which the other lacks ; and 
the great accomplishments in human society have been 
worked out by men and women of character working in 
cooperation. They modify and strengthen and regulate 
and guide each other. The greatest good of the race is 
to be attained through the best possible education for 
both. Why should they not be educated together? Why 
should the men and women who are to be the greatest 
factors in our democratic society be educated under condi- 
tions which promote self-consciousness and liking for the 
life of a club, either a man's club or a woman's club, rather 
than under conditions which make the recognition of inter- 
dependent relations imperative and give the best assurance 
of intellectual equality and similarity of outlook in the 
household, and of effective and balanced service in the 
state ? 

There is no reason. If there is such reason anywhere 
in all the world, there is none in America. We have 
made practical demonstrations and the results are good. 
We have done more for woman than any other land 
has done ; woman has done more for our country than she 
has been able to do for any other country. The facts and 
the reasons are obvious enough. No one, no party or 
school, is going to turn the hands back on the great dial 
which registers the progress of democratic institutions. 



CO-EDUCATION 271 

We are right, we will go forward. We will not be turned 
aside because a few men cannot see, or a few women do 
not use their new freedom rationally. We will go forward, 
holding out the very highest opportunities to both men 
and women, and we will do it in a way which will en- 
courage the very highest usefulness, cooperative useful- 
ness, in the home and in the state. 



IV 
SPECIAL ASPECTS AND PROBLEMS 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 

Americans are as free in their right of censure as in any 
other of their freedoms. The elementary schools are 
everywhere, and often they find themselves within the in- 
tellectual limitations of senseless criticism. The loosening 
obligations of domestic duty and the very weaknesses of 
the schools have produced an undue supply of people 
of superficial culture and of "professionals" without em- 
ployment; and the universal interest in education makes 
it quite possible for these to occupy themselves, and per- 
haps gain a little standing, by endless propositions about 
the schools. There is evidence enough that they are not 
slow to take advantage of it. The factors which these 
people have added and would add to the schools are the 
essential cause of a widespread difficulty. 

When but one third of the children remain to the end of 
the elementary course, there is something the matter with 
the schools. When half of the men who are responsible for 
the business activities and who are guiding the political 
life of the country tell us that children from the elementary 
schools are not able to do definite things required in the 
world's real affairs, there is something the matter with the 
schools. When work seeks workers, and young men and 
women are indifferent to it or do not know how to do it, 
there is something the matter with the schools. 

The length of the school period and the productive value 
of the citizen are closely related. Industrialism is the great 
basis of a nation's true strength and real culture. Knowing 
this we have seen that there is not sufficient articulation 



276 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

between the educational and the industrial systems of the 
country. We have seen the indefinite expansion of instruc- 
tion and the unlimited multiplication of appliances leading 
to literary, and professional, and managing occupations, 
without any real solicitude about the vital industrial foun- 
dations of the nation's happiness and power. A situation 
manifestly unjust to the greater number, even unjust to 
those for whom it has done the most, has resulted. Not- 
withstanding our boasted universality of educational op- 
portunity, there has grown up a condition in the edu- 
cational system, which overlooks the just rights of the 
wage-earning masses, and grievously menaces the indus- 
trial efficiency and the material prosperity of the country. 

The overwhelming trend of the programmes of the 
schools and of the influences of the teachers, acting upon 
our national temperament and aspirations, has led an un- 
due proportion of youth to literary and scientific study 
which too often ends either in idleness and insipidity, or in 
professional or managing occupations for which they are 
not well prepared, and which are already overcrowded. 

Nor is the inevitable disappointment the worst of it. 
There are a glare, a gamble, and a subtlety about it which 
are demoralizing to all youth. In the marvelous advance 
and by some legerdemain, men get to be generals who have 
never been captains, and overseers who have never been 
workmen. That aflfronts the sense of the country. We 
believe in the natural order of progress. While we hold 
that any one may aspire to any place, we hold also that he 
must win it, not by pretense, or by subtlety, or by favor, 
but through the work which leads to it, and by the gradual 
accretion of the substantial qualities which are the only 
true basis of his right to it. We care very little what the 
work is. We say that one who may work and will not work 
is not to be taken seriously. We have more love for a force- 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 277 

ful corporal than for an insipid colonel. We say that the 
only way to proficiency and the only claim upon respect 
come through the reflex influence of much work upon the 
worker. We believe that one whose labor, either mental or 
manual, adds to the power and the assets of the world has 
a wealth and a joy of his own to which the idler, no matter 
how rich, has no claim whatsoever. 

Manual labor is not urged as against intellectual labor, 
any more than intellectual as against manual labor. It is 
not said that one should remain in the "class" in which 
he was born, for we know nothing of classes in America, 
and we do not admit that any one in this country is ever 
born in a class. Work makes the worker. The willing 
workman, whatever his poverty or his work, is likely to 
be a better citizen and a better man than the willing idler, 
whatever his riches or his superficial accomplishments. 
It is not a matter of class at all, but of the adaptation 
of men and women in general to the work which they can 
do best. This need not discourage those of exceptional 
gifts, for all experience proves that the exceptional and the 
great have at first been inured to the severe labor which 
was at hand, and that this very fact opened the door of 
opportunity, pointed the way to the thing which they could 
do best, and seasoned them for the doing of it. It is a mat- 
ter of efiiciency, and therefore of happiness and growth, in 
occupation. The schools must keep abreast, now and in 
time to come as they have been doing in time past, with the 
natural outworking of our democracy; they must not be 
exclusive in any sense, but must be no less concerned about 
industrial than about intellectual education. The impli- 
cations and the influences of the schools must not lead boys 
who might become excellent cabinet-makers into becoming 
no-account lawyers, and girls who might be first-class bread- 
makers or dressmakers into becoming fourth-class music 



278 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

teachers. The best chance of every one is through the thing 
that he can do best, and while the schools are to inspire and 
encourage him, they may well be on their guard lest in 
misguided enthusiasm of their own they turn him from 
the course which is likely to be the best for him. 

All education must be provided in American schools, 
but conclusions about life occupations are not to be forced, 
— not even by implications. Determinations are to be 
left to natural inclinations and to the fates which are kindly 
to those who have real inclination to actual work of any 
kind. 

All this points to the fact that the school system has 
grown deformed; it is one-sided and not broad enough at 
the base. The trouble is not that the higher institutions 
have grown abnormally. They are doing what colleges and 
universities ought to do. They are not doing what they 
ought not to do. Free universities have become the finest 
expression of the souls of great states, and they are begin- 
ning to be the best expression of the souls of great cities, 
in all parts of the country. Nor is the difficulty in the 
secondary schools, although they are affected by it. The 
ailment is in the elementary schools. 

Our elementary schools train for no industrial employ- 
ments. They lead to nothing but the secondary school, 
which in turn leads to the college, the university, and the 
professional school, and so very exclusively to professional 
and managing occupations. One who goes out of the school 
system before the end or at the end of the elementary 
course is not only unprepared for any vocation which will 
be open to him, but too commonly he is without that 
intellectual training which should make him eager for op- 
portunity and incite him to the utmost effort to do just as 
well as he can whatever may open to him. He goes without 
respect for the manual industries, where he might find 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 279 

work if he could do it. He is without the simple prepara- 
tion necessary to definite work in an office or a store. He 
is neither clear about his English, nor certain about his 
figures. Parents often take their children from the ele- 
mentary school before the end of the course, not only be- 
cause they do not appreciate the value of education gen- 
erally, but also because they feel that the completion of 
the course will not add to the earning capacity of their 
children in the work which they must necessarily do. 

The programmes in elementary schools are overloaded, 
and the teachers are overtaxed. The terms have become 
too short and the vacations too long, in the interest of 
teachers who are often overworked by schools that are too 
large and programmes that are too crowded and complex. 
But that is not the worst. There is too much pedagogy and 
too little teaching. There is too much artificial, and super- 
ficial, and therefore false, culture, and too little of the only 
thing that makes true culture. There are too many classes, 
too many books, too many visionary appliances. The 
teachers are forced into fanciful speculation and airy 
methods in order to be thought at the fore of pedagogi- 
cal progress. There are pedagogical and psychological 
wretches who seem to think that they can experiment upon 
children as physiologists and bacteriologists practice upon 
guinea pigs, and that without any equivalent basis of scien- 
tific knowledge. The result upon the child is confused 
conceit rather than mental clarity, and a little information 
about everything rather than exact efficiency in any definite 
thing. The Germans surpass us in exactness and in the 
habit of taking care. Our schools lack concentration and 
drill upon any one thing until it is mastered, and therefore 
there is little exultation over accomplishment, small in- 
spiration to new undertakings, and a dearth of either in- 
formation or power that is permanently retained. It 



280 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

wearies the teacher and mystifies the child; it confounds 
the father and mother, and deprives the school of the in- 
telligent cooperation of the home. 

Even that is not all. We are more prodigal of the lives of 
children than is any other constitutional nation upon the 
globe. We frequently let them commence school late and 
come irregularly, and loiter along through a confused 
course at their pleasure or discomfiture. Between sub- 
ordinating our elementary schools to the requirements for 
admission to a literary high school, and the indifference 
of legislators and petty magistrates about making and 
enforcing attendance laws, we are doing a great wrong to 
millions of children, and withholding the support which 
the schools are bound to give to the strength and character 
of the Republic. 

The real situation in our elementary schools is not 
widely appreciated : the trouble is not where the uninitiated 
are looking for it. It is not, for example, with what the 
editorial writers call the "fads and frills." Drawing, 
basketry, modeling, sloyd, joinery, cooking, and sewing, 
for an hour or two each week, impose no burden. They 
afford relaxation, open the way for healthful comradeship 
and rivalry, supply motive, and lay a little of the ground- 
work for happy lives, by looking toward both the manual 
and mental efficiency so sorely needed. But we do not lay 
the first courses in the building with sufficient exactness 
and strength to enable our young men and women to erect 
either successful professional or successful industrial lives 
upon them. Good housewifery and good craftsmanship 
are not forging ahead. The bakeshop is a menace to 
stomachs and to homes. The woman who cannot bake a 
light loaf of bread, or broil a steak and keep the juices in 
it, or happily employ her odd moments with a needle, may 
be a very charming institution ; she may keep us posted 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 281 

about the new novels and the opera; she may amply make 
up for shortcomings by teaching school, but she is an 
inefficient home-maker, and it is not given to many to 
make up for that. The lack of housekeepers is as serious 
as the dearth of mechanics, and whatever the schools have 
done to correct the trouble, in either case, has been but 
little, and it has not been a waste of time. The only legiti- 
mate criticism upon it is that there has not been enough 
of it, or enough definiteness about it, to make sure of good 
results. If more of the time of the schools were given to 
these things, with a stern eye to efficiency, and if there 
were less waste of time in connection with books, we should 
soon see a new and more auspicious epoch in American 
education and in American life. 

The things that are weighing down the schools are the 
multiplicity of studies which are only informatory, the 
prolongation of branches so as to require many textbooks, 
and the prolixity of treatment and illustration that will 
accommodate psychological theory and sustain pedagogical 
methods which have some basis of reason, but which have 
been most ingeniously overdone. 

There is a waste of time and productivity in all of the 
grades of the elementary schools. If a school is to be 
graded, then a grade should mean something. A child is 
worse off in a graded school than in an ungraded one, if 
the work of a grade is not capable of some specific valua- 
tion, and if each added grade does not provide some added 
power. The first two grades run much to entertainment 
and amusement. The third and fourth grades repeat the 
work supposed to have been done in the first two. Too 
many unimportant and unrelated facts are taught. It is 
like the wearying orator who reels off stories only to amuse, 
seems incapable of choosing an incident to enforce a point, 
and makes no progress toward a logical conclusion. The 



282 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

early grades constitute the period of imitation, and tire 
work should be mainly drill based on memory and imita- 
tion. It is not the period of much thinking ; it requires such 
drill as will result in exact knowledge of the rudiments when 
the time for using them really comes. Thought should not 
be much expected in these grades. The reading should 
be for the quick recognition of the word and the proper 
expression of it, rather than to germinate thought. When 
thinking is possible and normal, the time to encourage it 
has arrived. Then it is done too slowly. The work of the 
first four grades is too much extended, and that of the last 
four is not commenced early enough. 

To illustrate: the backbone of our elementary work 
should be the English language, not language lessons 
learned and recited, but a progressive knowledge of gram- 
matical analysis, much reading for the pleasure there is in 
it, and a use of the language in accurate and forceful state- 
ment. If this is true, much of what we are now doing 
may be omitted. There is much in our elementary mathe- 
matics that is of little value as mental discipline and of 
little use in life. In the lower grades the pupils should 
be made "letter perfect" in the tables and the funda- 
mental processes. This perfect knowledge will enable 
them to master fractions, decimals, and percentage, 
which are the same things in different forms. The rest 
of the subjects treated in arithmetics is of little value 
except in particular employments which few of the pupils 
will enter. There is too much geography taught, and 
much is gone over again and again. Only the relations 
of the great natural and political divisions of land and 
water, the location of the great centres of population, with 
more of the details of one's own state, need find an early 
place in the schools. The rest is unremunerative to small 
children, and they will get it in a few minutes by and by, if 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 283 

it ever becomes necessary for them to know it. In physio- 
logy we are trying to teach much which only a physician 
can understand, and which there is no present call for the 
child to know, and we are doing it badly and using the time 
wastefuUy. We reach after too much mere information in 
the lower grades, and in the later ones we are not up with 
the normal powers of the healthy child. And the full 
and proper exercise of the intellectual, as of the physical 
powers is the essential condition of mental health. 

The larger part of this waste is due to two very plausible 
and very baneful doctrines which have pretty nearly taken 
possession of the schools in the last quarter-century; that 
is, the unsubstantial and delusive theories about speculative 
psychology, and the cure for all educational ailments which 
is falsely called "culture." 

Psychology, and deduction, and imagination, and senti- 
ment have a place in a system of education. Each has a 
large place where sense is free to ridicule its excesses and 
science may impose limitations upon its license. The 
forms and accomplishments of polite society are of course 
worth while, but mere manners may be only boorishness 
and brutality refined, or insipidity but little disguised. 
Culture worth seeking, in or out of the schools, must come 
from labor upon things worth doing, and from the in- 
fluence of the power to do and the pleasure of real accom- 
plishment upon the soul of the one who does. The external 
forms^ culture do not make real men and women, but 
enough work, and true teachers, and a healthful and at- 
tractive environment are more than likely to start boys and 
girls on the road to culture worth the having. 

There are people who worship theory as though it were 
greater than life, and culture as though it were something 
to be put on like a jacket, instead of being the result of re- 
fining the soul through labor and experience. Emotion, 



284 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and ecstasy, and affectation, are made to do duty for sin- 
cerity and power, and for religion and patriotism too. 
These people ignore the culturing value of labor, and of 
deprivation, and of sorrow. They are flippant about the 
Bible, without feeling its inspirations or studying its trans- 
lations. They are not much stirred by the flag, for they 
know little of the heroism that has reddened so many 
stripes, and they feel little of the aspiration that is emblaz- 
oned in every star. It is not said that these people are the 
rich. Quite as often they are people who make "culture" 
do duty for riches. Frequently they are people who have 
gained wealth faster than they could assimilate it. Who- 
ever they are, they should no longer be permitted to tear 
out the substantial underpinnings of the schools. 

These things are said only in explanation of the diffi- 
culties and in hope of finding a remedy for the troubles 
of the elementary schools. Whatever the explanation, the 
difficulty is manifest and the need of remedy is imperative. 
We must know what children of school age there are in a 
state, and where they are when the schools are open. We 
must stand for simplifying the course and shortening the 
time of the elementary schools, and for making their teach- 
ing of more definite worth. We must try very hard to have 
the child able to do some definite thing, no matter at what 
age we lose him. 

We must organize an entirely new system of general 
industrial and trades schools, which will make it worth 
while for all children to remain in school, and which will 
provide for the children of the masses, and for the great 
manufacturing and constructive industries, something of 
an equivalent for what we are doing for the children of the 
more well-to-do and for the professional interests and the 
managing activities of the country. 

It is time to organize a wholly new order of schools as a 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 285 

part of the public school system. We may separate the new 
order into two general classes. One class may train all- 
round mechanics for work in factories, where workmen act 
in cooperation, where each is part of an organization, and 
where much machinery is used, and these may be called 
factory schools. The other class may train mechanics who 
work independently, mainly with their own tools, and 
without much machinery, and these may be called trades 
schools. 

We say a " new order of schools " because the new schools 
ought to be sharply distinguished from any schools that are 
now known in America. They ought to be wholly apart 
from the manual training schools. They will have a distinct 
individuality and a definite object of their own. They are 
neither, primarily, to quicken mentality, nor to develop 
culture; those things will come in the regular order. The 
"culturists" are not to appropriate these new schools. 
They are not to train mechanical or electrical engineers; 
the literary and technical schools are doing that very 
amply. They are not even to develop foremen ; leaders will 
develop naturally, for they will forge ahead of their fel- 
lows by reason of their own ability, assiduity, and force. 
The new schools are to contain nothing which naturally 
leads away from the shop. They are to train workmen to do 
better work that they may earn more bread and butter. 

A tentative plan would make these new schools more 
like shops than like schools ; put them in plain but large 
buildings, sometimes using idle factories of which many 
cities have a supply ; use books somewhat, but make reading 
subordinate to manual work ; refuse to permit our charm- 
ing friends, who write and print and sell books, to inflate 
these schools, as they have the elementary schools, to 
the bursting point; put them in charge of craftsmen who 
can teach, rather than of teachers who are indifferent me- 



286 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

chanics ; keep them open day and evening ; make the instruc- 
tion largely individual; adjust them to the needs of those 
who must work a part of the time at least in order to earn 
a living, and make them for boys and girls and men and 
women, and of every kind and description which may be 
necessary to meet the demands of the local factories and 
trades. 

These schools will have to be an integral part of the 
public school system, for the double reason that they can- 
not be successful without articulating with that system, and 
that they will not be accepted either by capital or organized 
labor without standing upon a legal footing which is in- 
dependent of both and fair to each of them. It may as well 
be said at once that any school, teaching a definite trade, 
will fail without the sympathy of both the capital and the 
organized workmen engaged in that trade. They cannot 
be expected to support it, if it can be used in favor of 
another interest and so arrayed against their own. Capital 
will take care of itself under economic laws that are well 
understood. If it cannot venture with reasonable expec- 
tation of profit, it will retreat; but it will exist. Capital 
has a strong enough motive for activity in the hope of 
profits, but labor has a stronger one in the need of bread. 
In this country it is not in the nature of either to brook 
injustice, and the needs of each make it unnecessary that 
the other do so. In the last analysis each will have to 
square with the plan that stands fair, that encourages 
capital to provide labor for workmen by protecting all of 
the just rights of capital, and that encourages the man to 
make the most of himself by assuring all of his just rights 
in his individual industry and skill. 

That is an American plan, and it ought to prevail. Such 
a plan cannot in the nature of things be left to private 
enterprise. It cannot be dominated by any forces which 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 287 

are in the least exclusive. American workmen are not will- 
ing to depend upon philanthropy. They will not widely 
accept the training schools set up by the manufacturing 
corporations . They are entitled to the same, or equivalent, 
rights as those which are already granted to the professional 
and employing classes. They know that, and will exact 
what belongs to them. Whatever is done they want done 
so completely as to command the respect of the best skill. 
They will tolerate no false pretense about mechanical skill, 
but they will be glad to shorten the time in which their 
boys may become real journeymen. In any event, they 
know very well, at least their leaders do, that sound, 
practical training for their boys and girls can come in no 
other way than upon the basis of, and in association with, 
the public schools. 

The new schools cannot displace, or half displace, the 
common, elementary school. They will have to follow and 
supplement it. The reason lies both in educational neces- 
sity and in the likes and the needs of the people. But it is 
quite possible that the compulsory attendance age, in cities 
at least, may be so extended as to cover the time of these 
industrial schools; easily so, if the elementary course can 
be shortened, or children can be brought to the end of it 
earlier than they are. The law should see that a child is 
either in school or at work up to his seventeenth or eigh- 
teenth year. 

How far we can succeed in establishing these purely 
industrial schools is, of course, problematic. Cities and 
towns will have to be encouraged by liberal state support. 
No trades schools have ever been successful without gov- 
ernmental aid. The experiences of other lands — and there 
have been rich experiences in other lands — will have to 
become well known among our people. In any event, it is 
certain that the extent to which the movement takes hold 



288 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

upon our life seems to be filled with a significance to which 
no intelligent American can remain indifferent. 

Definite propositions have already taken shape concern- 
ing the articulation of these new schools with the public 
school system. It is proposed to have the compulsory at- 
tendance age begin at seven years in cities and towns; to 
take definite measures for a far more complete and regular 
attendance ; to lengthen the term and lighten the work ; to 
simplify the courses, and to give them a more industrial 
and efficient trend through the simple forms of hand work, 
such as paper cutting and folding, moulding in sand and 
clay, plain knife and needle work, and the like, which can 
be done in the regular school-rooms from the very begin- 
ning of the primary grades, and to push children along so 
that they will at all times have work which appeals to their 
years, and will complete the present work up to the end of 
the sixth grade at an earlier age than now. If the present 
eight grades can be shortened by one or two grades and a 
year or two of time, so much the better. 

At the end of the present sixth grade it is proposed to 
have the system begin to separate into three very distinct 
branches. The larger part of the work of the present 
seventh and eighth grades would be uniform, but some 
differentiation, looking to very complete separation, would 
begin with the present seventh grade. 

The three distinct classes of schools to follow the ele- 
mentary schools would be : First, the present high school 
system, which would be somewhat relieved because of the 
new arrangement; second, business schools looking to 
work in offices, stores, etc. ; and third, factory and trades 
schools looking to the training of workmen. 

With the work of the present seventh grade there might 
be commenced some study of modern foreign languages 
by pupils destined for the literary and classical high 



EDUCATION FOR EFFICIENCY 289 

schools; some special commercial subjects by pupils des- 
tined for the advanced business schools, and some special 
training at benches with tools, and in the household and 
domestic arts, for those who are to stop with the elementary 
schools, or are to go to the factory schools or trades schools. 

At least half of the teachers in the seventh and eighth 
grades should be men; and these grades may well be 
housed in central and specially prepared rooms. 

We might hope to economize the time and increase the 
efficiency and productivity through the grammar grades to 
such an extent that a part of the compulsory school life of 
the child would remain at the end of the eighth grade ; and 
we might also hope that there would be schools beyond the 
eighth grade which would be able so to increase the earn- 
ing power of the child, no matter what his life work should 
be, that it would be clearly to his interest to remain in 
school. Then as he approaches what is now the seventh 
grade, he and his teachers and parents will begin to 
think of the work he is ultimately to do, and by the time 
he is through the elementary course he will find abundant 
opportunity and have some enthusiasm for a school which 
may exactly qualify him for that work, no matter whether 
it is professional, or in business activities, or in purely 
industrial lines. 

The sure basis of a nation's strength is in industry as 
much as in intellect, and in skill as much as in resources. 
The assurance of a nation's greatness is in the equipoise 
of mental and manual activities. We do well to open 
treasure-houses of higher and liberal learning, but they 
will avail little if we permit inefficient primary schools and 
if we turn away from the labor of the hand. We do well to 
conserve material resources, but it will not count for much 
unless we conserve the time of boys and girls and enlarge 
the efficiency and versatility of the craftsmanship which 



290 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

must convert resources into merchantable goods. It is 
idle to pursue a course which is destructive of the equilib- 
rium of the common life and ignores the decisive influence 
of work upon the worker. Heads and hands and hearts, 
acting together, are larger factors than wood and iron and 
water in the economic problems of the world, and they are 
infinitely larger factors in the moral, and constitutional, 
and international, and eternal problems of men and 
women. 

We cannot escape the fact that the elementary schools 
are wasting time, and that the lack of balance in the edu- 
cational system is menacing the balance of the country. 
Children, schools, and country are being ground out 
between fanciful and conflicting educational theories. 
The demand that there shall be less mystery and exploita- 
tion, less prolixity and parade, that the programmes of the 
schools shall be more rational and the work of the teachers 
shall fit children for definite duties with more exactness, 
is heard on every side. 

It does not mean that we must give over the work which 
goes to literary accomplishment, or art sense, or refined 
manners, or professional equipment, or scientific learning 
of whatsoever kind. It does mean that the equilibrium 
between intellectuals and industrials is being lost and must 
be restored. It does mean that children are being mis- 
directed into misfits and that it must cease. It means 
more concern for life, increased productivity in the ele- 
mentary schools, and incidentally, more rational courses in 
the secondary schools. 



II 

THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 

The success of the farmer depends upon balanced char- 
acter, love of the earth and of life in the open, knowledge 
of his farm and the ability to make some scientific appli- 
cations, practical experience, a grasp of market conditions, 
sound relations with railroads, aggressiveness in planning, 
and good business methods, more than upon expertness in 
craftsmanship. The farmer is his own capitalist. There 
is little room for capital to dictate. Hardly any other man 
has the earning capacity of so much property dependent 
upon his personal attributes as the farmer. The mechanic's 
equipment is in his skill of hand, and in his not expensive 
tools if he works by himself, or in a plant owned by others 
if he works in a factory. In either case he may move 
readily. The farmer's equipment is in his farm and in his 
trained and dependable judgment. He is very much a 
fixture wherever he is. 

In the mechanical industries men live and think and plan 
and work collectively. They go out much of nights; they 
associate in organizations easily. In the agricultural in- 
dustries men live and work very individually. They come 
to conclusions and carry out plans by themselves. In the 
cities, centralized capital on the one hand, and the leaders 
of labor organizations on the other, struggle with one an- 
other, to the frequent disadvantage of both. ^There much 
depends upon others. The farmer controls a considerable 
property, and the responsibility of prosperity or penury 
is very largely upon himself. With both the farmer and the 
mechanic the personality is of overwhelming importance. 



292 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

but the conditions give the individuality of the farmer 
larger opportunities and make his success or failure more 
notable. Essentially, the farmer lives at home. The family 
life is by itself. The work is at home. The family all have 
part in it. There is less mingling with fellow craftsmen 
and with the men and women of other crafts. Trades 
unionism is absent. The blacklist and the boycott are 
almost unknown. The farmer is both a capitalist and a 
laborer. If there are combinations to control the prices of 
labor, they will not hold together; and if there are com- 
binations to control the prices of products, they are made 
by manipulators who get the advantages. It all makes so 
distinct a manner of life that it must create instrumentali- 
ties and policies of its own. 

This is an industrial democracy. People are to do what 
they can for themselves. What can be done only in com- 
bination and through the use of common power may be 
done in that way so long as the fundamental equality of 
right is preserved. With this simple limitation, the state 
must aid all of its industries. And the manner of its aid 
must be specific, and the measure of it must regard the 
significance of the industry. 

There are two great lines of policy which the combined 
action of the people of every state ought to assure. One 
concerns a system of education which is calculated to sus- 
tain modern agriculture, and the other relates to the things 
which combined intelligence and power may carry directly 
into all of the agricultural parts of a state to help the 
people of readiest wits who are most disposed to help 
themselves. 

Not all that agriculture needs is to be supplied by public 
schools. There are other great factors in the problem. With 
agriculture, as with every other great interest and its 
attendant life, there is as much to be reckoned with outside 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 293 

as inside of the schools. But it is not too much to say that 
agriculture, above almost any other great human or com- 
mercial interest, now claims the support of an adequate 
and comprehensive system of schools. 

Primary schools alone, no matter how good, cannot 
supply the education which is required to make the most 
of the agricultural industries. The man who says high 
schools are unnecessary, in the country or anywhere else, 
is behind the times, and as much out of touch with rational 
educational policy as with the spirit of the country in which 
he lives. Nor is it going too far to say that colleges are as 
vital as high schools to a system of instruction which will 
be equal to the demands of agricultural necessity. The first 
national industry, which supplies the larger part of the 
raw material for our manufactures and produces four times 
as much in value as our mines and oil wells together, brings 
good policy to the aid of necessity in claiming the support 
of a universal system of education. It is not merely that the 
farmers' boys and girls, like all other American boys and 
girls, are entitled to their utmost chance; the nation's 
educational purpose has combined with the importance of 
the industry to settle the question. 

There is not much to be said in criticism of the rural 
schools so far as general elementary instruction is con- 
cerned. It is true that there is a lack of grading and an 
absence of plan by which pupils may progress from one 
plane to another and continually look forward to higher 
work. But it is also true that the instruction is more indi- 
vidual, and that all the pupils hear all of the instruction 
and all of the recitations in all subjects and in all grades 
of work. The rural schools are at least reasonably free 
from the overcrowding, the overdoing, and the over-ex- 
ploitation for all manner of ends that are so common in the 
cities. The teaching is by young women of an average 



294 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

competency which is now remarkably high. If there could 
be a uniform system of supervision by superintendents, 
who hold or can earn teachers' certificates, in districts that 
are small enough to make actual supervision possible; if 
such a system of supervision could be free from all partisan- 
ship ; and if the supervisory districts could be arranged so 
as to have the village high schools at the centres, and re- 
late all of the elementary schools to them in a way, there 
might be a universal system of schools for teaching elemen- 
tary English branches in the country, quite as well adapted 
to the general needs of the country as those in the cities 
are adapted to the needs of the cities. And all this might 
very easily be. 

But while the schools of both elementary and secondary 
grade in the country are serving, or may without difiiculty 
be made to serve, the needs of the country in the ordinary 
branches of an English education, they are doing nothing 
to train specially for the vocation of farming. The impera- 
tive need of training for the industrial vocations in the 
cities is evident. Training for the professional vocations 
has been firmly established. There is quite as much basis 
of reason and right in popular education for the vocation 
of farming as for mechanical, constructive, commercial, 
and professional businesses. 

The agricultural situation is absolutely distinct from any 
other industrial situation, and if it is ever met efficiently it 
will have to be met in a very distinct way. It will never be 
met by making agricultural schools of the country primary 
schools. The children in the elementary schools are too 
young to want much agriculture ; they want English, and 
mathematics, and the elementary sciences. The primary 
children in the cities stand more in need of agriculture 
than do the primary children in the country. The primary 
schools in both city and country are all-round schools. 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 295 

Some of the city children will go to the country ; some of the 
country children will go to the city. The education of the 
country child is not to be narrowed down to things rural. 
His books are not to exclude illustrations from, and all 
other recognition of, rural life; but neither are they to 
exclude all else. His primary school is to be able to train 
him in the fundamentals of an all-around man, who will be 
free from all exclusiveness, and able to study and do to the 
best advantage anything that his qualities and his tastes 
may dispose him to study and to do when the time comes. 
All schools require balanced work until the time for 
specialization comes. Balanced work requires elements 
that relate to the country as well as those that relate to the 
cities, and vice versa. There are higher laws and funda- 
mental principles concerning education, and they bear alike 
upon all parts of the country and upon all manner of 
people. If these laws are violated, or these principles broken, 
the people soon come to realize it, and trouble is let loose 
as it ought to be. 

Much is heard about nature study. Its value is recog- 
nized. It is good. But it is equally good for all children, 
as cutting paper, and weaving mats, and moulding clay and 
the like, are good for all children. All of these things make 
for all-round culture, for all-round outlook, and for all- 
round love for work and for facility in doing. Nature 
study is quite likely to appeal less to the country child than 
to the city child, for obvious reasons, and while it is to be 
encouraged in the country as in the city, it apparently has 
about the same relation to real agriculture that sloyd has 
to laying out an electric plant for a city, or laying down 
the keel for a battleship. In other words, it is a good thing, 
— a good thing everywhere, because it helps mould the 
character of boys and girls, and keeps the way open for 
what may come after, but calling it agricultural instruction 



296 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

will not increase its importance so much as it will confuse 
some minds and subject us to the criticism that we are not 
doing what we proclaim. 

Enthusiasts want the teaching of agriculture encouraged 
in the elementary schools. It is difficult to determine, how- 
ever, what are the phases of real agriculture which are 
adaptable to the primary schools or how to install them 
in ways that will dispose children to become interested in 
them. The children of farmers are likely to find interest 
in many things which look to quickening and dignifying 
the different agricultural industries, which are not incom- 
patible with the plan and purpose of the elementary 
schools, and these things should be introduced into the 
course of study ; but there is no more reason in teaching real 
agriculture in the elementary schools, than there is in teach- 
ing engineering or medicine. Agriculture is not an ele- 
mentary subject. 

In some quarters the normal schools are asked to train 
teachers of agriculture for the elementary and secondary 
schools. Some of the normal school teachers know some- 
thing about some of the sciences that are fundamental to 
agriculture, and some of them know something about 
some of the practical methods of farming. The fact is, 
however, that nine tenths of the students in the normal 
schools who will ever teach at all are girls. Doubtless it 
will continue to be so. Ambitious men who go beyond the 
high schools are going to the colleges. And the gods of the 
Greeks, mean and sordid as they were, would laugh at the 
spectacle of girl teachers training farmers' boys in the in- 
tricacies of real agriculture. Generations will come and go 
before there is any substantial result to agriculture through 
the girls in the normal schools. 

No educational system capable of adequately supporting 
the agriculture of a state will be complete without an agri- 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 297 

cultural college. One with experience in developing an 
agricultural college worthy of the name will know that 
there will not be many of these institutions in the same 
state, no matter how great the state may be. In such a col- 
lege the best scientific training and the deepest scientific 
research are imperative. If they are not of the best and the 
deepest they will be of no avail, and they can hardly be 
such apart from the teachers, the investigators, and the 
laboratories to be found at a real university. At a real 
agricultural college the most exact and reliable experiments 
and demonstrations are also imperative, and there are both 
educational and financial reasons in abundance why these 
will not be much duplicated or often realized apart from 
a university. In all phases of higher education what is 
good is not cheap, and what is cheap is not good. It is no 
less true — doubtless it is more true — in the higher study 
of agriculture than in any other phase of advanced educa- 
tion. And the higher learning is quite as vital to agriculture 
as to any other interest of the people. A real agricultural 
college, associated with a true university, is the true policy 
in every state. Such a college may be expected to vitalize 
whatever is done in connection with agriculture in the high 
schools, and whatever has a bearing upon agriculture 
in the elementary schools, and it may also be expected to 
incite and uplift profitable agricultural operations among 
the people. 

There are things to be done in the interest of agriculture, 
outside of the schools. There need be no squeamishness 
about doing them. There need be no hesitation about 
asking the state to do them when only the state can do 
them. It is clearly within the scope of the political power 
of the people to promote an overwhelming common interest 
by combined action, when it cannot be done individually. 
It is unmistakably so when the people acting together 



298 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

really do so much to enlighten the political and profes- 
sional life and culture of the state, and so much to support 
the commercial interests of the people. After all that has 
been done in many other directions, agriculture need not 
hesitate ; and others need not sneer when agriculture ven- 
tures to ask. 

For example, a competent and complete agricultural 
survey ought to be made of all of the farming lands of every 
state. The farmers should be told rather minutely of the gen- 
eral attributes of the soil of the different counties and of its 
chemical elements as well. They should be told, in a gen- 
eral way but with some particularity and definiteness, how 
it may be used to the best advantage. One may say that 
they do know. Certainly they know much about it, but if 
the subject were to be intensively inquired into they would 
themselves be surprised at the number of things which have 
not yet occurred to them. Quite as certainly there are some 
things which common usage shows that many of them do 
not realize. They should be told of the additions which 
are needed to restore what has been taken out, or to adapt 
it to the demands of new situations. They should not have 
to learn this from commercial corporations that are sell- 
ing fertilizers. They should not go on putting on stuff 
that contains nitrogen and no phosphorus, when what the 
ground needs is phosphorus and not nitrogen. They 
should not go on selling products containing constituents 
that the soil requires, when they are worth more to keep 
than to sell. The common belief among farmers, that mere 
rotation of crops rests and recuperates the soil, is doubtless 
fallacious beyond the fact that some crops do not deplete 
soil as rapidly as others. What has been taken out, what 
needs to be restored, should be declared by competent 
authority acting for and responsible to the farming inter- 
ests. What may be profitably grown, having in view the 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 299 

factors in the soil, and the faciUties for changing those 
factors, and the new facilities for transportation, and the 
new demands of the markets, ought to be asserted by 
undoubted authority. For example, again, if four fifths of 
all farm animals were to be destroyed by some noxious 
disease, it would seem a great hardship, but if the pest 
would discriminate in the one fifth which it spared the 
plague would in the end be a real gain. The propagation 
of great herds of mongrel animals which are commonly 
less serviceable than those which might be bred, and which 
often are not worth their keep, should not be continued. 
Every farm ought to have at least one new colt every 
spring. He should have a pedigree that he could be as 
proud of as a Son of the Revolution, or a member of the 
Mayflower Society. He should not be expected to trot a 
mile in less than three minutes, but by the time he is four 
years old he should be worth at least three hundred dollars 
and create a sort of savings bank account for his owner. 
There is much to learn about milch cows and scientific 
dairying before this can be the first dairy country in the 
world. Of course, there are many fine dairy herds, and of 
course there are some up-to-date dairymen, but there are 
hundreds of thousands of dairy cattle which are too mean 
to keep. Ample knowledge upon the subject is available, 
and the real prosperity and pleasure of dairying, as well as 
the common safety of the people, depend upon observing 
it. A state might well propagate the most desirable and 
profitable animals of the farm, and actually aid farmers in 
propagating such for themselves. There are a half dozen 
German states which have more money invested in build- 
ings and grounds for a veterinary college alone, than the 
state of New York or its people have invested in veterinary 
science since the Mohawk began to pour into the Hudson. 
The Imperial Government of Japan in recently study- 



300 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

ing the matter of hens, with its customary habit of taking 
care, sent two trusted representatives to England to select 
the finest specimens of two breeds which it had decided 
were best adapted of any in the world to the needs of 
Japan. Why did they not take American hens ? Doubt- 
less because they found that all chickens look much alike 
to most Americans. There is as much difference in the 
individuality, and the productivity, and the respectability, 
and the value, of hens, as there is in horses, or cattle, or 
sheep, or swine. Other peoples make them the subject of 
governmental care. 

Then there are the large matters of small fruits, and 
vegetables, and flowers for the markets. Here and there 
one gets rich through the discriminating propagation of 
one or the other, but a great many people seem blindly 
to suppose that they are wholly dependent upon their own 
spontaneity, and that there is nothing to do but to leave 
them to nature and to chance. Yet there are states and 
nations which see that it is worth much more than it costs 
to make each of them the subject of the investigations and 
the teachings of a distinct department of a university. 
There is the vital subject of horticulture in its larger aspects, 
with its infinite claims and its unlimited possibilities. 
The apples, pears, grapes, and nuts ; the forests, the shade 
trees ; all phases of landscape architecture and gardening, 
demand the oversight and the leadership and the aid of the 
state on both the scientific and practical sides. Yet again, 
there is the still larger subject of the home-making, with its 
architecture and sanitation, the matter of decorations, the 
comforts and conveniences, with the adaptation of foods 
to the family needs, and the thousand things which, with 
attention, will make the life of the mother an easier one, and 
the possibilities of the children different and greater than 
they otherwise would be. And right here is the overwhelm- 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 301 

ing consideration to which all others must be contributory, 
and before which every other pales into insignificance, and 
that is the public need of knowing that boys and girls are 
the first concern of a state; the public obligation to do 
the material things which will dispose every farm boy and 
farm girl to look upon farming more for their own sake 
than for that of the farms, to look upon it not as repel- 
lent drudgery, but as the high grade business that it is. 

All these things are outside of the schools, but they have 
to proceed from the prevalent system of education, and 
they all relate back to the schools. In a word, from which 
there can hardly be any dissent, the prosperity and the 
pleasure of a great industry depend upon the complete- 
ness, the symmetry, and the cooperative efficiency of the 
parts of the educational system which enter into its details 
and give rationale and character to it as a whole. And 
in another word, the states which lay the most emphasis 
upon those phases of learning which bear directly upon 
the mechanical and agricultural industries, and which 
carry them right to the homes of the people, will enjoy 
the largest commercial prosperity and will have the hap- 
piest and the strongest populations. 

It would be a mistake to leave this subject without a 
word as to the special training of the women who live in 
the country, and as to the education which enters di- 
rectly into the making of the farmer's home. To accom- 
plish any large results men and women must not only 
work together, but they must have equal advantages; 
they must be equally enthusiastic and aggressive, and the 
work of each must be equally regarded and respected by 
the other. There is a lack of such equality of outlook 
and opportunity in the greater part of American territory 
and in American education. The women have less chance ; 
not so much special training either in or out of the schools. 



302 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

not so many social contacts, not so many implements to 
do with, and not so much to stimulate and liberalize their 
work either within their own homes or in comparisons 
between different homes. There are notable exceptions, 
but we have necessarily to deal with generalities. Of course, 
no reflection is intended upon a class of women who are 
as justly entitled to the highest respect for doing all that 
they do under circumstances that are often discouraging, 
as they are entitled to an open educational chance with 
the men, which very commonly they do not get. If the 
women could be put in charge of the farm, the operations 
would doubtless go quite as well as they do now; but if 
the men were to be put in charge of the house, the greater 
number of them would either lie down under the burden, 
or there would be so many changes and so many new 
conveniences and fixings and implements that the treasury 
would be bankrupted. Not all of the fault is with the men, 
although a good share of it belongs to some men. Two 
farmers' wives once watched an admirable cooking dem- 
onstration at a county " domestic science" association, and 
at the conclusion one said to the other, "I suppose this 
thing is all right for these city and university women, but 
I can cook without any of their help." Doubtless she could, 
and quite as doubtless she belonged to a class who have 
much to learn about the most desirable and economical 
food supplies, and questions of nutrition, and the manner 
of preparation, and the time for use, and the manner of 
serving. And that is far from all there is of it. It reaches 
to the making, the sanitation, and the decoration of the 
house, to the furnishings and conveniences of the home, 
to the deep subject of home economics and household 
management, and to all that most effectually brings the 
vital support of the home to the support of the work upon 
the farm. It may make the life of the family something to 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 303 

which ambitious boys and girls will cling ; even something 
to which, being added to the rational and cordial welcome 
of their fathers and mothers, they will be proud to invite 
their friends. 

In a word, in considering the educational needs of agri- 
culture, the education — the liberal and special education 
— of women claims quite as much as that of men. There 
is quite as much necessity of specialization for girls as for 
boys, when the time for specialization comes. The courses 
in the secondary schools, whatever form the school is to 
take, are bound to regard the work of girls as well as that 
of boys, and there will be no complete or symmetrical 
college of agriculture unless there is associated with it a 
department of household economy, with the many offer- 
ings which go to the bottom of all the problems of the 
household upon the farm. Nor will there be sufficient 
result until the need of it is recognized among the people. 
And it may as well be added that, when such courses are 
provided, there will not be much result unless girls can 
go and take them with just as much independence, and 
security, and common respect as any boy upon the grounds. 
If this cannot be until boys are taught some lessons, the 
date of entering upon that process should not be long post- 
poned. 

It is time for this country to enter upon a great system 
of agricultural extension. The schools, from highest to 
lowest, should act in accord, not only in training students 
and in scientific research, but in carrying knowledge to 
the very doors of the farmers. Evangelistic work in agri- 
culture should go everywhere. Seed specials should be 
run over the railroads. The blood of the best farm animals 
should be distributed throughout the country. Object les- 
sons of special interest to both men and women should be 
carried in all directions. The applications should be espe- 



304 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cially adapted to every section, and the fullest attention 
should be given to the less favored rather than to the more 
favored counties of every state. 

A state might well send a commission of practical farm- 
ers and trained scientists, or, perhaps better, a commis- 
sioner who is experienced in farming, informed in econom- 
ics, and trained scientifically, to any country in the world 
that seems able to send us anything in the way of farm 
products or domestic animals that will be of advantage to 
us, with authority to buy, and directions to learn, whatever 
would be of advantage to our agriculture. New Jersey has 
recently imported fourteen Percheron and Clydesdale 
horses to extend the breeding of these magnificent draught 
horses among her people. Another state has sent one man 
to Germany to study veterinary colleges, another to Den- 
mark to study dairying, and a third to Argentina to inves- 
tigate beef cattle. There are scores of similar subjects 
which individuals cannot exploit because they do not know 
what to do, or are without the money or the inclination to 
engage in large undertakings. In such circumstances it is 
clearly within the functions of the state to act. There is no 
smack of paternalism or socialism about it. All good gov- 
ernments do it in order to aid the industries of the people. 
It involves no large amount of money, in view of the sums 
to which states are accustomed. But it cannot be done by 
agents who know little about it, or who are more con- 
cerned about themselves than about the enduring inter- 
ests of a great state. If honestly and capably done, the 
sentiment of the state would cordially sustain it because 
there would be sufficient assurance that whatever was 
undertaken would be scientifically initiated and well and 
wisely carried out. 

There are perhaps three great fundamental factors in the 
distributive wealth of a state; namely, natural resources. 



THE FARM AND THE SCHOOL 305 

commercial situation, and the intelligence which puts 
them to the very best use. The largest factor in natural 
resources is doubtless the tillable soil. The things in the 
life of a people which are of utmost and enduring worth 
invariably come from Mother Earth. Manufactures are 
dependent. Importations are uncertain. Toll may not 
always be taken of the commerce that comes through both 
our eastern and our western doors and is carried over our 
highways. Mother Earth will never forsake and she will 
never deceive us. Neither will she permit us to trifle with 
her. One who cannot afford to lose, cannot afford to 
speculate in uncertain and demoralizing crops any more 
than in uncertain and demoralizing securities. Nor can he 
afford to go on in the way which did well enough when we 
were wholly an agricultural people, when children were 
seasoned through doing their share of the work, when 
books were few, and when the simple district school joined 
with the work of the farm to support a simple, but none the 
less noble, civilization. 

And we shall be a witless, as well as a misguided people, 
if we do not combine to ascertain from the reports of the 
markets and the work of the laboratories what may be 
done without much risk, and if we do not adjust ourselves 
to the more complex, the more intelligent, and the better 
life of our day in a way which will enable our properties 
to get our share out of it. The farmhouse will have to have 
the essential conveniences and connections of the city 
house. The boys and girls will have to have the things 
which they know other boys and girls have. The young 
men and maidens will have to have a good time and be 
able to find the ways for meeting their reasonable ambi- 
tions. The shorter working day and all the better condi- 
tions of labor will have to be reckoned with. The comfort, 
and the enlightenment, and the moral betterment of all in 



306 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

the household will have to be sedulously studied and gener- 
ously provided for. 

Of course the social, and educational, and industrial 
combination will give help to such as accord with it and are 
capable of making use of its advantages, but the personal 
equation will have to settle things upon each farm, and the 
personal attributes of the individual farmer will have to 
prevail. But while, no matter what the general level of 
intelligence and sagacity, some will fail and complain, and 
some will prosper and be happy, yet, there is no doubt 
about the public attitude and the common undertakings 
of a people being often vital to the progress of individual 
men and women who deserve to prosper. 



Ill 

PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 

The belief that physical training is entitled to only a sub- 
ordinate place in omr scheme of popular education is cer- 
tainly persistent, but assuredly that is not because of any 
indifference to physical symmetry, strength, and skill, or 
any doubt about the value of legitimate sport in rounding 
out the characters of men and women. Nor is it associated 
with any misgivings about the advantages which must flow 
from the new and gratifying tendency to bring, so far as 
there is any real call for it, field sports and the training of 
the body, into some definite relations with the commonly 
accepted work of the schools. 

We know full well how a perfect body gives effectiveness 
to moral impulses, and how a handsome man adds the 
highest charms to a manly one. And we know, also, how 
strength and suppleness balance minds, enlarge the re- 
sources of the home, and steady the course of the state. 
But we know, too, that the interdependence of the physical, 
mental, and moral attributes is not even. We recognize the 
attractiveness and the forcefulness of one in whom they are 
balanced, but we ought not to fail to see that the intellectual 
and moral faculties are not as helpless without the physical, 
as the physical is repugnant without the intellectual and 
the moral. A mere pugilist, even with the skill of his sense- 
less art, is an offense to balanced men and women, while 
some of the finest gifts which minds and hearts have 
brought to the world have come from men and women who 
had no charm of physique with which to sustain them. 



308 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

and no physical strength with which to bear them to the 
unbeHeving. 

Society need not do everything for its members, and it is 
not bound to do all things in equal measure. Much must 
be left to individuals, and on the whole, and in the long run, 
the more that is left to individuals which they can do well, 
the better. The strength of the American nation has per- 
haps come from these two principles more than from all 
else together ; namely, that we have assured to every child 
the fundamentals of an education, and then put upon him 
the burden of freedom, — a chance to make the best of 
himself, or the responsibility of gravitating to the under- 
side. 

We may well invoke the doctrine of the simple official 
and the simple administrative, as well as of the simple per- 
sonal life. Officialism, the tendency to make more pub- 
lic work and spend more public money, particularly in 
view of the aggressive public spirit and of the abundant 
prosperity and ample resources of this country, may well 
be attended with some thought if not with some apprehen- 
sion. Surely this is not an unreasonable suggestion in view 
of the quite apparent enlargement of the demand for added 
support from the state and the no less manifest willingness 
to concede this by powerful and influential factors in the 
state. Without assuming a too confident attitude upon all 
the phases of a great political philosophy concerning which 
the more advanced thinkers are but just feeling their way, 
it cannot be too much to say that — in view of the enor- 
mous cost of the public school system and the greater ex- 
penditures that must surely follow — the men and women 
of the schools had better not anticipate public opinion, 
and the definite authority of the people, in adding any fea- 
tures that are not clearly essential to a programme of work 
which is already overloaded, to an administrative respon- 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 309 

sibility which is already overweighted, and to an expense 
account which is already very long. 

The schools are not lacking in essentials, and they are 
likely to find more of them. A school may have some non- 
essentials, but it should not unless the community is abun- 
dantly able, and the people understand the matter thor- 
oughly. If more things are to be added to the work of the 
common schools, they should not be added by teachers, 
or by ambitious superintendents, without ample discussion 
and free approval by the people. Private schools may do 
whatever their patrons will support. But the free and 
state-enforced schools of the masses must assure to every 
child such rudiments of knowledge as are necessary to his 
free participation in free government and to his fair oppor- 
tunity in the world. In all towns of any size in this country, 
high schools form a consistent part of the public school 
system. But the elementary schools will not be so good, 
or the high schools so good or so universal, if in either 
ease they are weighted beyond the means or the desires of 
the community with burdens not integral to their generally 
accepted plan. All beyond that must wait upon special 
circumstances and the willing support of the people. 
Happily, our American educational system is unique in the 
flexibility and adaptiveness which afford opportunity to 
special conditions and carry the schools along with the 
intellectual advance. 

Physical training is not one of the fundamental things 
which the schools must everywhere provide. It is not as 
needful to the making of the perfect man as either mental 
or moral training. It is desirable, but one may do without 
it better than without one of the others. The state leaves 
the moral training, except so far as it is inevitably and inci- 
dentally associated with the training of the mind, to the 
home and the church, because the different denomina- 



310 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tions of Christians do not agree upon how much or what 
distinctly moral or religious training may be carried on by 
the common schools. There is no such exception taken to 
physical training. There is no objection to it on principle, 
and therefore it is permissible and desirable in communi- 
ties where public sentiment will sustain it. But it is not so 
urgent anywhere as either the training of the mind or the 
training of the conscience, because youth naturally helps 
and promotes its physical self more than its mental or its 
moral self. Very often its physical properties get on very 
well indeed if left rather largely to themselves. 

No form of indoor training can take the place of open- 
air play in the elementary schools. Calisthenics are unob- 
jectionable, but with little people they are no substitute for 
natural play. Playgrounds may cost more, but they are 
worth more. No matter what they cost, it is the business 
of the public to provide them. Happy is the town which 
provides them early when it can do it adequately. 

If the buildings are hygienically pure, if there is sufficient 
air space and sunlight, if the mechanical appliances and the 
possibility of their refusing to work are kept at a minimum, 
if the grounds are ample and dry, and if teachers are sane 
about the relation of work and of freedom for children, 
there need be no fear of lack of physical training in the 
elementary schools. 

This is not saying that special teachers who will quickly 
see the special needs of multitudes of children in the city 
schools and who will aid the class teachers to see the need 
of artificial exercise, which must often be substituted for 
real work or natural play, are not desirable in large sys- 
tems of schools; but the special circumstances ought to 
govern. 

It is not necessary to discuss the advantages or disadvan- 
tages of different systems of physical exercise. All have 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 811 

advantages and are practically beyond criticism. Adapta- 
tion to conditions is the paramount and not very serious 
question. Enthusiasts will not agree; it is their mission in 
life to stand up for their own, and they generally do it well. 
If we let them do that and give them their chance, they 
ought to be content without expecting that we shall. let any 
"system" own the schools. 

Passing from the elementary up to the secondary schools, 
we come upon a different situation, both as to the schools 
and the pupils. The schools are likely to be almost exclu- 
sively in congested districts. The pupils have outgrown 
the kind of play that is best for them. They have become 
more constrained and a trifle more conventional. They 
resent leading strings, — and they know much that is not 
so. They are at a critical stage in their bodily development. 
They need less care but a little more guidance, sympa- 
thetically and unostentatiously given. If the population is 
not dense there is little trouble, for they get about all the 
help they require in this connection in their ordinary work 
and natural play, but in the centres of the cities this is hardly 
true. In these centre gymnasiums are a necessity. There 
is no doubt whatever of the advantage of regular work in 
a gymnasium, both for young men and young women. If 
they do not commence it at the high school age, they are 
not likely to commence at all. 

Whether the public high school should supply this de- 
sirable addition to the opportunities of youth is not so 
much a question of educational necessity as of neighbor- 
hood feeling and expediency. Often there is no local need 
for one, and no local appreciation of the uses of one. Often, 
private enterprise or associated enthusiasm, like the Chris- 
tian associations, the Turner societies, or the athletic clubs, 
provides them. While the high schools are not bound to 
provide them, still, if the deliberate sentiment of their con- 



312 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

stituencies will sustain them in doing so, it may be done 
without invading any sound principle of the educational 
system. The difficulty is that when one school does it the 
others think they must, in order to be up to the times, and 
they undertake it upon a basis which cannot succeed. A 
gymnasium is worthless unless thoroughly equipped and 
made inviting, and unless managed by specialists who are 
themselves not only able to use the apparatus in attractive 
ways, but are also sympathetic and inspiring teachers. 
Gymnasium work will be without result unless very regular 
and very persistent. With all these it will afford splendid 
results. Without a ready and popular support and a clear 
understanding of all the conditions which alone can assure 
results worth the while, it is safe to say that the establish- 
ment of a gymnasium in a secondary school is a move not 
to be encouraged. It must at all times be had in mind that 
so long as pupils live at home there are some things con- 
cerning them which may well be left to the homes to see to. 

When we come to the colleges and universities the condi- 
tions are again different. The students are away from 
home, with all that implies. Much closer mental applica- 
tion is exacted. The need of regular exercise is much 
ignored. Youngsters dare fate senselessly when they are 
free to do so, and in college they are likely to come into a 
larger freedom for the first time. The need of a complete 
gymnasium with ample instruction and required attend- 
ance, at least in the freshman or the freshman and sopho- 
more years, is manifest enough. Here gymnasiums are 
both necessary and practicable. Ready and sensible medi- 
cal supervision of all the students and of all the affairs of the 
institution is also very desirable. 

The physical training of a whole body of students evenly 
is better than the training of a few elaborately. But inevit- 
ably some will excel, and such will have special ambitions, 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 313 

and they will gain special attention. Good rivalries will 
ensue, not only between individuals in the same institution, 
but between experts in different institutions. Then, of 
course, there will be the utmost effort and the most exact 
and complete preparation. 

Reference is not now made to sports or games or to 
"team work" at all, but to the strength, endurance, and 
skill of the individual man and to competitions where they 
are put to their highest tests. They are wholesome and 
quickening in every way, — nothing short of a spur to the 
schoolboys and an inspiration to the educated manhood 
of the country. Even if the notable contests are narrowed 
down to a few men in any one year, the opportunities are 
open to all, and very large numbers get the uplift which 
goes with them. The conditions of the competition are well 
settled, the management is exact, and the opportunities for 
frauds are very slight and the temptations hardly percep- 
tible. The boys manage these contests themselves, and 
beyond all doubt they manage them upon a plane so high 
that it ennobles the managers, pleases the contestants, and 
satisfies all. The uncertainties do not invite betting. The 
disappointments are not deep. All honor the victor, and 
none more than his closest competitors, for none know the 
cost of the triumph so well as they. If the achievement 
is noteworthy, it is at once known in every part of the 
country. 

The English say that we strive especially for the records 
rather than to gain them from normal work ; that we concen- 
trate supreme effort on a few, instead of getting the benefits 
of the work for all ; and that we almost lose the point of 
physical training altogether. They must say something, 
and it must be admitted that there is something in what 
they say. But our way is the American way and theirs the 
English way, and we are both getting on very well, — and 



314 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

we are all glad that we are getting on so well together. 
We are each likely to tell the other much that it is very 
desirable to know. 

The intense application and the long and exact special 
training incident to these sharp contests seem to require 
caution against " overtraining," or the development of some 
part or function of the body at the expense of some other. 
There is danger enough of this to claim educated and expe- 
rienced oversight. Aside from the possibility of this there 
seems to be nothing hurtful to the participants or demoral- 
izing to the student body from this high grade physical 
work, or from the ensuing contests. 

The distinction between physical training and " ath- 
letics" seems to lie between indoor and outdoor work; 
between what institutions do for students and what stu- 
dents do for themselves ; between work performed to keep 
health and promote strength, and sport for the excitement 
and fun that are in it; and between the work of an indi- 
vidual and that of a "team." 

Any criticism brought against physical work in the 
schools is stirred by these team contests. No matter how 
many it takes to make a team, it takes thousands and more 
to make a game. The crowds of fervid partisans on either 
side; the banners and streamers and songs and horns and 
calls and yells and yell-captains; the officials and coaches 
and trainers and doctors and rubbers and bottle bearers 
and scrubs and athletic statesmen, must all supplement 
the teams which struggle for the mastery and for the pres- 
tige of their universities, in order to have a game. There 
are some who dislike all this. If you are out for fun it is 
quite as well to have it. The men who know little about it 
are able to find enough to criticise. Old men, who never 
thumped one another when boys, are apt to be against it. 
Boys who do embroidery work while their mothers read 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 315 

poetry to them, men who want a fire engine or a lifeboat 
to slow down for fear something might break, without 
seeing that something must break if it does slow down, and 
men who hug the constitutional negatives after the council 
is over and the bugles have sounded the advance which 
must enforce the constitutional commands or save the 
constitution itself, are hardly likely to be in love with 
games which turn upon strength, force, nerve, sense, and 
skill. 

But the American crowd likes them. Training has to be 
sustained, perhaps required. The strenuous games attract 
the multitude, perhaps in a measure which has some perils 
in it. The fact that the crowd likes them is not against 
them. The common feelings are not necessarily all wrong. 
The crucifixion of the flesh, the breaking of the spirit, have 
no part in modern ethics and no share in twentieth-cen- 
tury teaching. The fair questions are: Are these great 
games fraught with unpreventable evils which outweigh 
any good they may have ? Are they on the whole good, or 
bad, for the youth of the country? And, what ought to 
be the attitude of the college concerning them ? 

We would meet these questions squarely. To do that we 
must face the exact criticism and focus the discussion. 
Baseball is a natural college game. It is open, and all may 
see all that occurs. It is not so technical that people who 
follow ordinary pursuits cannot understand it. It is rela- 
tively free from dangers, and while it attracts the throng it 
is not encompassed by many temptations. It comes in the 
spring when there must naturally have been almost a year 
of residence in college. Rowing has many good features 
and not many bad ones. It seems to encourage gambling in 
some measure, but otherwise is mostly beyond criticism. 
Tennis is ideal, but many young men want heavier work. 
Golf is hardly a college game ; it has been said that it is a 



816 AlVIERICAN EDUCATION 

state of the social mind. The game which holds the centre 
of the stage in the fall and draws all the criticism is football. 
It has more ins with more outs than any other college game 
invented. The troubles with it are not in the high schools, 
unless it is in the influence of the college game upon them. 
If there is trouble, it is in the college game itself, in the con- 
sequences to college boys, and the general bearing of the 
game upon the thought and feeling of the country. 
Pointedly, these are the criticisms on football : — 

(1) That the game is dangerous and exhausting. 

(2) That the 'varsity teams do not represent the bodies 
for which they stand. 

(3) That the game makes heroes of men who have no 
right to the commendation of a democracy of learning. 

(4) That men who give the time and energy required 
in successful football cannot maintain positions as good 
students. 

(5) That the coaching system is vicious, training men to 
evade the rules when that will aid success. 

(6) That the greater part of the game cannot be seen 
by spectators, and that this aids the evasion of the rules, 
and worse; that it encourages real battle rather than 
open manliness and a chivalrous spirit on the part of the 
players. 

(7) That it induces connivance on the part of students 
and graduates, on the part of the sporting element in the 
community in larger measure, and on the part of college 
authorities in some measure, to get men who can play a 
strong game by paying them for it in one way or another, 
and without reference to their standing in college or their 
right to admission at all. 

(8) That it is too expensive for sport, and gathers more 
money than ought to be under the control of students, and 
that the game turns on factors which money brings into it. 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 317 

and therefore that it does not afford a fair basis for inter- 
collegiate contests. 

(9) That it breeds a good deal of loafing, gaming, and 
drinking, and does not make for educational effectiveness 
and sound living. 

(10) That success is such a factor in college prestige and 
university preeminence, that the popularity of the game is 
so general, the pleasures of university triumphs so delight- 
ful, the meaning to youngsters who are yet to go to college 
so significant, that the authorities fall short in courage to 
deal with the evils of it, and that these are degrading to the 
student life of the whole country. 

Some will deny the facts or the reasonableness of the 
objections, but the facts are not overstated, nor is much of 
this criticism without reason. It may well be surmised that 
the game cannot endure as a college sport unless such seri- 
ous evils as common knowledge associates with it are ad- 
mitted and corrected. If that is done, it must be by the 
men who manage or are responsible for it. 

Some evidences have reached the public of unmistakable 
fraud in getting and keeping men on the teams who are in 
college for nothing else. These evidences cannot be pre- 
sented here, but they may be indicated. One of the leading 
universities in the country is called upon to defend itself 
against the charge, brought upon it through the course of 
its athletic managers, that it has on its team a bruiser who 
has made the round of three or four universities to play 
in the game ; another, that it has a player who is a profes- 
sional pugilist ; and a third, that its football team is largely 
sustained through political and other jobs which thinly dis- 
guise bribe money given to the players in order to keep 
them in the university. That the atmosphere of the game 
as now managed predisposes to gambling can hardly be 
doubted by any one with his eyes open. 



318 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

The advantages of the game are undeniable. It makes 
for pluck, nerve, endurance, self-control, and alertness in 
emergencies. Fair students who are successful football 
players are not only among the very best men in college, but 
their promise of marked success in life is exceptionally 
high. The game brings to many boys their first real ambi- 
tion to do something better than others can do. It smells 
of the ground and that is healthful, — physically and men- 
tally healthful. Its influence upon the thought and life 
of the players is quickening and steadying. It makes for 
generalship and for organized effectiveness. American 
football had something to do with the new method of fight- 
ing and the new measure of energy and resourcefulness 
shown by American boys at El Caney and San Juan, at 
Manila and Santiago. Moreover, it is exhilarating and in- 
vigorating, and it binds men together and develops class 
feeling and college spirit through splendid cooperative 
effort. It brings colleges to the fore in the thought of the 
masses. And it takes the conceit out of boys, and in many 
ways makes for genuineness in living. On the whole, it 
goes as far as anything else in the universities to make their 
thought square with the affairs of life, and to lead educated 
men to the places of the most decisive consequence in the 
concerns of a great people. 

It is all this which makes the game so well worth fighting 
for. But in the end it must be said that if these things are 
to be gained at the expense of fifteen lives and many hun- 
dred serious injuries in a season, or, worse yet, at the cost 
of a widening spirit of lawlessness, the cost is too great, and 
all these advantages will have to be foregone or gained in 
some other way. 

All true and pure sport capable of use for college contests 
must be fought for. The better the sport the truer this is. 
As it becomes exhilarating and popular, the larger and 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 319 

meaner are the barnacles which fasten upon it. But the 
more quickening the struggle and the more uplifting the 
spectacle, the more it is worth contending for. To the 
young men and women who are in our universities, who 
know not much of physical effort and practically nothing 
of physical danger, there is more legitimate leaven which 
makes for lives that can do things, in the rush and struggle, 
the strategic assault and defense of a 'varsity football team 
on a fall afternoon, than is brewed in a good percentage of 
the college classrooms of the world in a semester. Then the 
game is worth purging and saving. 

The evils may be put out of it by authority. Students 
may be expected to go as far in their excitement as the 
authorities who are charged with the duty of regulating 
their strenuosity and enthusiasm will allow. They will have 
no difficulty in finding excuse for excesses which faculties 
should see — but refuse to see. And with boys who have 
the stuff in them the outlook is clear or cloudy, and moral 
fibre becomes firm or flabby, as those to whom they look for 
commendation or remonstrance or punishment give, or fail 
to give, them what is their due. 

Until all possibility of it disappears, the moral sense of 
America should rebel against any view of college govern- 
ment which leaves college boys to go to the bad without 
much hindrance. The theory that all a professor has to 
do is to be intellectually, or even unmorally scientific, may 
prevail in some countries, but it should never be ac- 
cepted here. Fathers and mothers who give their sons and 
daughters over to any such intellectual leadership as that 
deserve the distress which unrealized hopes are likely to 
inflict upon them. It is not a question of college freedom. 
Freedom is not license anywhere. Freedom is stainless. 
There is no such thing as freedom to do wrong, in college 
any more than in the state. The point of sport and of col- 



320 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

lege contests is lost if college faculties manage them. 
Endow American sport or American college athletics and 
you doubtless expel the soul and spirit from them. But 
students must distinctly know that their management must 
keep in step with good morals and in key with all the bene- 
ficent ends for which colleges and universities exist. More 
than the point of sport is lost if this is not so. 

If in any case students run amuck, or get to running the 
faculty amuck, the board would well install a new faculty, 
and if they should be too much for faculty and board 
together, parents would well withdraw their sons, bene- 
factors would well withhold their gifts, affections would 
well be placed somewhere else, and what is left would well 
go down into the depths together. The right to have free 
contests and exhilarating sports and the right to gain the 
benefit of managing these for themselves is not to be con- 
founded with the right to carry the college into unseemly 
places, or to gamble under the name and colors and lights 
of a university. Boys are to have freedom to manage col- 
lege sports only when they realize that they are managing 
for all, and when they manage in ways that hold out wel- 
come to every honest man and bring no blush to any fair 
and modest cheek. 

But let it be repeated that where the wrongs come in, it 
is less likely that they spring from student inclinations than 
from official inefficiency. Students sustain a government 
which governs. All they want to know is that it is strong 
enough to govern, and that it is sane and sympathetic 
enough to govern well. Whether or not tariffs are to be 
regulated by their friends, it is surely true that boys are. 
No man is much of a friend of boys who has forgotten 
about being a boy, who cannot see things from the outlook 
of the boy, or who cannot sympathize with the activities 
in which every real boy must engage. 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 321 

A university president should not only have part in the 
athletics because of his own interest, but he should use the 
sports to make management easy. He should go to the 
hurrah meetings as often as the crowd will welcome him, 
and they will welcome him as often as he is genuine about 
it. He should go down into the gymnasium pretty often, 
and leave his shell in the sanctum. When the university 
lines up for an issue, he should be with it. He should pay 
his dollar and get into the crowd and yell for the flag, and 
earn the right to have his word welcome at the athletic end 
of the establishment. He should stand up for a student 
management that is square and decent and right. But 
he should hold the right against the time when it is needed 
to bar out the vicious and temper the excesses; against 
the time when it will bind all the parts together and keep 
the whole upon the earth and rather near the middle of the 
road. On suitable occasions he should try to speak the 
word in the crowd which will marshal sentiment, set up 
standards, and fix the pace. He should draw upon the 
moral sense which is never lacking in a college throng, to 
brace up the weak and cool off the heads that get unduly 
heated. If, after that, the bad persist, he should join the 
issue so squarely that in a little time the air will be clearer 
and the outlook more encouraging, — or else the demon- 
stration will be absolute that a new administration will be 
a good thing to have. 

There ought to be no difficulty about the university 
managing the boys who manage the athletics, or settling 
the tone and character of the athletic work. The authority 
is as absolute as the responsibility is immediate. It is the 
common law of the schools that their authority covers 
everything that may aid their usefulness or stain their good 
name. None can use the name or fly the flag of an institu- 
tion without submitting to its direction, or else being posted 



322 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

as a fraud. Only a sincere and authoritative word to any 
student should be sufficient. If students ever band together 
to resist the deliberate word of college authority, it is not 
altogether certain that they are wrong, but there is no pos- 
sibility of doubt about the fact that they need a walloping 
that will last a student generation and be handed down to 
student generations which come after; or that the college 
needs a government that can govern. But happily be it 
said that such cases are so unusual as to be hardly in the 
reckoning at all. 

It is to be hoped that the great universities will serve the 
good cause of physical prowess and strenuous sport in all 
the schools by saving the game of football. If they request, 
the rules will be changed so as to make the game more open 
and attractive, less hazardous and unseemly, and so as to 
make the maiming of an opponent under the pile impos- 
sible. A university direction that none shall represent it in 
an inter-university contest but a matriculated student who 
has been in residence a year, would very nearly settle mat- 
ters. The factors of a game are bound to square with the 
honor of the university, and the management of the univer- 
sity is bound to see that they do. The insistence that the 
gate fees which are senselessly high, having amounted to 
$60,000 at a single game, shall be at a rate which does not 
discriminate against great numbers who love the sport and 
want to follow the flag, would be a good preventive medi- 
cine against a malady that is becoming too common and 
serious in university life. If, beyond this, it might become 
distinctly understood that there is nothing in common 
between a university and a saloon, and that it is a crime in 
the university, as it is in the state, for a boy to gamble on 
university contests, about all the grounds for the criticism 
would be removed. 

If it be said that these measures would take the life and 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 323 

the interest out of the game, then the game ought to go. Any 
game which is not consistent with full college work on the 
part of the players ; any game which does not beget moral 
character and true manliness on the part of the truest lovers 
of sport ; any game which must be handed over completely 
to professional coaches who use up boys to vindicate sys- 
tems of coaching and who are strangers to the main and 
enduring purposes of college life, will have to go. If the 
enthusiasts are not on their guard, they will prove more 
than they would wish. 

College athletics comprehends the whole matter in all 
the schools. Children imitate their seniors; the schools 
below imitate the schools above. And they are more aggres- 
sive in imitating the vices than the virtues. The high 
schools and the little boys in the primary schools and the 
kindergartens imitate the play and the sports of the col- 
leges, and they copy the worst phases without appreciating 
the best. With college athletics upon a sound footing mat- 
ters are made easy for all the teachers and all the parents 
of the country. The responsibility of college authorities 
concerning the purity and influence of all play and sport, 
of all games and contests, is obvious and weighty. The 
better sentiment of the country should enforce the respon- 
sibility. The colleges and universities will willingly re- 
spond, but they need the support of insistent public sen- 
timent. 

All of the responsibility is not upon the colleges. The 
extent to which students in the high schools are often 
encouraged to seize upon a freedom which is only permis- 
sible with older students, and to use it in dangerous ways, 
is absurd. It seems to be going from athletics to organiza- 
tions and activities of every kind. The responsibility of 
boards of education and faculties is immediate and the 
authority is absolute. It is needless to say that whatever 



324 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

involves the good name of the school, that whatever con- 
cerns the moral sentiment of boys and girls, is to be dealt 
with. 

The following physical training and athletic creed may 
be drawn from what has been indicated. But this, like all 
creeds, will perhaps need rewriting now and then : — 

(1) Work and play are vital to the growth of physical 
symmetry, strength and skill, and the rounding out of the 
perfect man. 

(2) The more real the work and the more natural the 
play, the better. 

(3) Where these are lacking it is desirable to create 
artificial means for supplying them. 

(4) Mind, heart, and body are dependent upon one 
another, but not equally dependent. 

(5) Physical training is not to be counted among the 
fundamentals or the essentials of the common school sys- 
tem; it is not incompatible with that system: special cir- 
cumstances are to determine whether the schools should 
assume it. There is little call for it in the rural districts 
and small towns, but more where the population is con- 
gested and resources are ample. There is not much call for 
it in the primary schools, but more in the advanced schools. 

(6) The main business of the common elementary 
schools is to initiate the correct use and expression of the 
intellectual faculties, with such reference to moral sensi- 
bilities as the regime of the system may impose and the 
opportunities of teachers, with correct moral perspective, 
will afford, and with such regard for health and balanced 
physical development as sanitary schoolhouses and sane 
teachers, with a little general assistance by special teachers, 
in the cities, make practicable. 

(7) In the secondary schools special facilities for physical 
training, such as gymnasiums, are quite permissible, but 



PHYSICAL TRAINING AND ATHLETICS 325 

here too the conditions of population and the neighborhood 
feehng should govern, and nothing should be undertaken 
without a good understanding of all that is involved, or 
without carrying out all that is attempted in good form and 
completely. 

(8) In the advanced institutions physical training is 
practicable, should be provided for, and, generally speak- 
ing, may well be required. 

(9) Contests of strength, endurance, and skill between 
indi\'iduals are desirable. 

(10) The lowering of records is a distinctly laudable 
ambition, because of the bearing of individual accomplish- 
ment upon all concerned, but the highest consideration is 
the growth of physical proficiency in the multitude. 

(11) Team contests have a more distinctly invigorating 
influence upon students and upon the common thought of 
the country than individual contests, but are encompassed 
with corrupting tendencies which demand the alert over- 
sight and more decisive protection of competent authority. 

(12) Students are to manage student contests, but only 
when the management is thoroughly compatible with the 
ideals of the institutions represented. There is no school 
freedom not consistent with the ends for which schools 
stand. 

(13) An institution dishonors itself when it permits one 
not a regular and genuine student to represent it. 

(14) Any physical work or contest incompatible with 
regular student work bears heavily upon a few and dis- 
credits all the serious work of an institution. 

(15) A system of coaching which cares nothing for the 
man who is a factor in a game, which stops at no method, 
which cares only for success and for the prestige of a pro- 
fessional coach, and which is not representative of the 
honor of an institution, is vicious and intolerable. 



S26 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

(16) A contest between educational institutions must be 
free from features which make for profligacy or corruption. 

(17) The use of athletics to advertise an institution is 
reprehensible. 

(18) No sport can stand for an institution which, by 
reason of the large gate fees, bars out (or ought to) a large 
percentage of the constituency of the institution who want 
to be present at its contests. 

(19) The friends of college sport will have to fight for its 
integrity, and the more inspiring it is the more the barnacles 
of society will seize upon it and the more true manliness 
ought to contend for it. 

(20) Physical exercise and open-air play are very great 
factors in the development of men and in the evolution of 
the social health of a people. Educational administration 
should make use of them, and should be held responsible 
for keeping them clean and making the most of them. In 
the athletics of the school system as in everything else 
associated with the schools, the government of the schools 
is bound to govern. 



IV 

PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

It is being asserted, with some persistence, that in recent 
years there has been a letting down of the moral plane 
among the people of the United States. It is being bruited 
about that our moral sense in later years is less acute than 
in the earlier years of our country, and that the moral 
standards of America are less exact than those of other 
countries. 

Those who say this are quick to attribute the cause to 
the absence of religious instruction in the common or tax- 
supported schools. The charge has been given new point 
since the state universities have grown so great. 

It is a serious charge from a quarter which, of course, 
has our entire respect. If the moral sensibilities of our peo- 
ple are less pervasive and acute than those of other peoples 
are, or than those of our fathers were, our religious teach- 
ers and others would be derelict if they did not protest. 
If they also think that this is because of the non-sectarian 
character of the schools, they ought to say so. But be- 
fore saying that, they ought to realize that they will be 
discredited in that public opinion of the country which 
is above every sect, if their belief in the decadence of 
morals is not justified. And they ought not to fail to 
see that if there is such moral depression as they think 
they see, and if it is due to the cause they assert it is, it 
proves nothing short of the break down of the political 
philosophy and institutions of the Republic. 

The thing goes to the very foundations of the splendid 
and costly temple in which the people of the United States 



328 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

live, and which they have erected in the behef that it would 
not only give them shelter and security, but also oppor- 
tunity to develop the purest and highest type of Christian 
civilization ever conceived by the heart and mind of man. 
There is the possibility that all the people who have 
had part in the building of this house may have been in 
error, that the lives which have been lost and the sorrows 
which have been endured in the making of it have been 
in vain; but an educated man, who must be assumed 
to know something of political and religious history, who 
may be expected to put a just valuation upon political 
equality and religious freedom, is bound to feel the re- 
sponsibility, and the solemnity, and the vital necessity 
of such a charge, before asserting that the schools are re- 
sponsible for our present moral standards, and that those 
standards are lower than they used to be. If a teacher, 
or a leader of religious teachers, is free to make it, leaders 
of lesser weight will be free to follow, and many of the peo- 
ple may be free to believe it. Doubtless all this has been 
considered. 

We must either ignore this charge, or examine it rather 
critically. It does not comport with our regard for the 
good intentions, and the piety of those who make it, to 
ignore it. It may be examined without anger, and it ought 
to be discussed without giving offense. A government 
which makes for irreligion is a mistake. We make here 
no fine distinctions between religion and morals. No 
matter what incidental advantages there may be in such 
a government, they cannot be sufiiciently compensatory. 
But the founders of this government did not imagine that 
they were setting up such a government as that. They 
were religionists of the severest type. They had fled from 
other lands that they might be free from governments 
which governed in the name of religion, but yet took 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 329 

away all religious freedom. The governments they had 
left behind them made them know that there must be a 
new plan before there could be more freedom. 

The men who framed the national and the state consti- 
tutions of this country saw, and the results enable us to see 
it even more clearly than they, that the vitality of a state 
depends upon moral freedom, and that moral freedom 
depends upon opportunity without interference by the 
state. But they saw also that the self-interests of men, 
the urgency of theorists, the ambitions of human organ- 
ization assuming to move in the name of God, are men- 
acing to the freedom of a state. Therefore, when they 
framed the first constitutions that had ever been re- 
duced to written form for a people, they wrote it large 
and plain that religion should be encouraged, that prefer- 
ment in or exclusion from the state should depend upon 
no particular rehgious belief, that there should be com- 
plete separation between church and state, and that all the 
people should have equality of right and opportunity under 
the law. They thought they were laying foundations which 
could sustain all manner of civic institutions for enlarging 
the opportunities of men, and that they were opening the 
way for a larger and freer stream of that human feeling 
which is the sum and substance of moral character and 
religious life. 

Religion is inherent in men and women. Freedom of 
thought and of the expression of it is a vital factor in it. 
Where the attempt has been made to suppress it, or control 
the form in which it should be expressed, there has been 
sharp resistance. Wherever the attempt has been im- 
posed upon men of Caucasian blood it has failed. For this 
reason all governments for or over educated people which 
have not had a large measure of democracy have failed. It 
has been not so much because men wanted to govern, as be- 



330 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cause faith would not be bound. Of course, there are mo- 
narchial governments that have not failed. But there is no 
government that has not permitted an advance in educa- 
tional opportunity and religious freedom, that has not re- 
cognized the rights of men and bent to the political power of 
the plain people, which is not breaking down. Our gov- 
ernment has succeeded so strongly because it was the first 
to see all this. It was not only all provided for in the con- 
stitutions, but it was amply provided that nothing could 
come in to interfere with it. In working out these provi- 
sions we have rapidly grown to be a mighty people ; but 
that is of no avail if we have grown to be an unmoral 
people. 

The founders of the Republic had reason enough to 
fear a state buttressed by the deep religious feeling of a 
church, and a church which could call to its aid the political 
and military power of a state. They knew full well that 
the worst blots upon the great page of human history were 
there by reason of things done falsely in the name of re- 
ligion, but with the sanction of a church. Our Dutch 
forefathers had had part in the world's first and greatest 
war for religious and political freedom in the Netherlands. 
Our English forefathers had been hunted out of Britain 
for refusing to let the combined state and church bind 
their thinking and fix their ways of worship. And the 
builders of this nation had come from every people under 
the sun for nothing but to escape the political and religious 
limitations of old systems, and to enter into the larger 
liberty of the land where the state may govern without 
cant, and religion go forward unhampered by the self- 
interest of any leaders of the state. 

We have not only inherited religious feeling, but we have 
inherited Christianity. We have not only inherited Chris- 
tianity, but under the plan of government which our fathers 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 331 

set up, we have enlarged it. We are neither going back 
to Confucianism, nor are we searching for a new reUgion. 
Christianity has always made for human progress above 
all the forces which have come into human life. It is not 
the only religion. It is not the only one permitted here. 
But it is overwhelmingly the religion of the United States. 
It is in our feeling and in our thinking. We set apart one 
day of the week in recognition of it. It is in almost every 
verse of our poetry. We proclaim it in our sorrow and in 
our thanksgiving. It is diffused in all our institutions. It is 
invoked on all public occasions. Democracy is the best 
and the greatest expression of the Golden Rule, and the 
Golden Rule is the gist and essence of kinship with God. 
This thing is the warp and woof of our laws. It is recog- 
nized in all of our great state papers. Magna Charta, the 
Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confedera- 
tion, the federal Constitution, the constitutions of all the 
states, proclaim it. Washington avowed it in his Farewell 
Address, and Lincoln departed from his manuscript at 
Gettysburg to introduce the words "under God" into 
the prayer "that this nation, under God, shall have a new 
birth of free/lorn, and that government of the people, by 
the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
When the words "In God we trust" were removed from 
our coins, the protest of the people restored them. 

Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust." 

In the constitutional convention of our little ward, the 
island of Cuba, the most violent discussion of the entire 
convention was provoked by the motion to strike out the 
provision concerning God and the freedom of religion, 
and the most overwhelming vote cast in the convention 
retained it. We had transmitted a lesson. No representa- 



332 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tive man or assemblage sitting under the flag of the United 
States has ever had the hardihood to dispute or even ignore 
this fundamental basis of our social and legal systems. 

Our scheme of popular education is the logical and 
necessary accompaniment of a plan of political govern- 
ment based upon freedom of feeling, and thinking, and 
acting. If religion enters into the making and the mainte- 
nance of the American nation and the several states, it 
enters into the schools of the country. The schools are 
the creations of the states. They came into being by the 
exercise of the sovereign political power of taxation. They 
could come in no other way, for they rest upon precisely 
the same basis as the state. If the state were to be over- 
thrown, the schools would fall. They are not only the 
opportunity of the citizen, they are the safety of the state. 
If the schools were to cease, the state would come to an 
end. If all of the training were to be in sectarian schools, 
the differences in the state might be expected to be as sharp 
as the differences among the sects. Differences among 
the sects are not very serious when a sect carries no sword, 
but such differences in the state might once again become 
very dangerous. And so, if the sects cannot be recognized 
in the state, they cannot be in the schools. 

But religion and sectarianism are very different things, 
and religion may enter into an American state and its 
schools, when a church or a sect may not. If the perfervid 
denominationalists do not see that, all the other people do. 
And the other people are vastly in the majority. Religion 
is the outflowing of the soul to a Supreme Being, with all 
that this implies. A church is a human creation to pro- 
mote religious ends. Denominationalism rests upon one 
or another system of philosophy; that is, of human reason- 
ing, concerning religion. Of course, these philosophies 
are entitled to great regard, for they have come from great 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 333 

minds, have stood hard tests, have gathered many disciples, 
and accompUshed large results. They have been the vehi- 
cles for carrying religion to the millions. But because it has 
become clear enough that it is bad, both for the state and 
the church, for a state to be mixed up with a church, — 
even a good church, — it is not in the possibilities that a 
democratic state can be without, or can fail to sustain, 
religious culture. God goes where He will. 

Religion is not barred from the schools, except when 
the leaders of the sects refuse to put religion above sec- 
tarianism, and refuse to go where they cannot propagate 
the particular tenets of their denomination, or except as 
denominationalists object to any expression of religion in 
the schools unless it be their own. The state does not 
object to the reading of the Bible in the schools. The 
legislative charter of the greatest city of the country even 
provides that it shall be done. The reading of the Bible 
was formerly very common in all the schools, and there 
is reason to think that it is more common now than many 
suppose. Doubtless this is the practice in all our state 
universities, and in nearly all the high schools. If it is less 
common than formerly, it is because religious people have 
objected to its being read by any but themselves, because 
of their fear that it would be done in ways or accompanied 
by expressions which would be inimical to their particular 
sectarian doctrines and interests. But while religion in the 
school might be helped by formal religious exercises, it is 
not suppressed by the omission of them. Religious feeling 
and culture are as inherent in the school as in the state, 
and if one form of expression is barred there will be others. 

There have been others. We have not suppressed or 
lessened the religion or the Christianity we have inher- 
ited; we have expanded and enriched it. We have done 
it by distinguishing it from sectarianism. We have done 



334 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

it by putting it above sects, above a human organization 
called a clLurch, above an intellectual philosophy called 
theology, and above a platform grown old called a creed. 
Religious expression may even be freer and richer in unde- 
nominational than in denominational institutions of higher 
learning, because discussion will be rife and free under 
the roof of a university, because there can be no sectarian 
limitation upon freedom of feeling and opinion, and be- 
cause there can be no formalism and no venerated doctrine 
in the way of the pervasive and progressive power of God. 

Parenthetically, let it be said that this does not imply 
any disparagement of or disbelief in denominationalism. 
Sectarianism is important, but not of the highest impor- 
tance. It is itself the product of freedom, and it has en- 
larged freedom. It has kept and is keeping the beacon 
fires burning. It is to be sustained, but not taken too seri- 
ously. It is a means, not the end. It was the logical result 
of religious persecution, but it is not a thing to die for 
when there is no persecution. Perhaps one of the divine 
ends of the denominational system is toleration, that reli- 
gious toleration which is the groundwork of our American 
civilization. Possibly that may make us the most mutually 
helpful and the most genuinely religious people in the 
world. 

And let no word here be construed into adverse com- 
ment upon such manifestations of sectarianism as parochial 
schools or Christian colleges. There were reasons enough 
for them, and the fruits which they have borne claim the 
greatest respect. Their work often claims the highest 
commendation. There will always be enough for them to 
do. No one opposes their continuance, and all wish them 
well. In many cases they preceded the ample provision 
for education made by the state or its sub-divisions; often 
they fill a place which would otherwise be vacant; com- 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 335 

monly the state owes them a debt which can never be paid. 
It is to be regretted that we cannot come to agreement 
upon some basis of popular education and reUgious culture 
which would be repugnant to none, and which would 
relieve the denominations and the churches from the effort 
and expense for instruction that the most forceful of them 
feel bound to make. And we should stand always ready 
to take any step not inconsistent with our fundamental 
plan which will contribute to that end. 

Allowance should be made for the differing points of 
view. Any scarcity of candidates for the Christian min- 
istry is not due to "godless state universities," which in 
the nature of things cannot be godless. The democratic 
university was destined to come in any event, and is one 
of the logical products and instruments of a great civiliza- 
tion; and the civilization which has brought it forth is 
one of the most remarkable in all human history. All 
should join in making the non-sectarian schools just as 
religious as possible, believing that the prosperity of every 
higher institution of learning will add to the prosperity 
of every other which tries unselfishly to promote the com- 
mon good of men. 

But now to the question which has been too long de- 
layed. Have we been retrograding in morals ? We have 
been progressing in every other way. All manner of people 
keep coming to us in ever increasing numbers. We have 
always feared that they might make self - government 
unsafe. But they have not ; we have assimilated them. De- 
mocracy is stronger than it ever was. We have been mak- 
ing intellectual progress. The United States is accumulat- 
ing a fine literature, and is now carrying on the greatest 
publishing business in the world. We have forged ahead 
industrially, and we are beginning to conserve resources 
and apply science to our industries. And we have been 



336 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

making political progress too. The understanding of pub- 
lic questions grows clearer and more universal, and the 
voting of the people more intelligent. The moral right was 
never more splendidly asserted in public life, and the issue 
of political contests was never to be relied upon more con- 
fidently than now. While all this has been going on, have 
we been growing morally obtuse and degenerate? There 
is nothing to signify it. One who is frightened about 
that has hardly read the literature of the times with a 
student's care. We are surely none too good, but that 
there has been any general breaking down of moral sense, 
any increase in the ratio of crimes or of little meannesses 
out of proportion to the increase of population, appears 
to be without evidence and against the evidence. 

Of course, we have more people to govern. Certainly, 
they are not as homogeneous as the people used to be. 
This throng not only has to be governed, but the governing 
must be done by and through themselves. It is harder for 
ninety millions than for nine millions to govern them- 
selves. We have more crimes of every kind because there 
are more people, just as we have more accidents because 
there are more railroads. It is hard to keep our criminal 
laws and our judicial procedure up to the needs of such 
a rapidly growing population and of a civilization that 
quickly becomes more and more complex. 

While the people have increased twenty-fold, the oppor- 
tunities and the temptations for wrong have increased a 
hundred-fold. We have more banks and more embezzle- 
ments than we used to have, but every banker in the land 
knows that the measure of integrity among the officers and 
employees of banks has steadily advanced; and all the 
world ought to know that the moral fibre of the men whose 
business it is to handle money is infinitely stronger than 
that of those whose energies are directed into other fields. 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 337 

Undoubtedly our vast mining, and manufacturing, and 
transportation industries have produced some very artistic 
scoundrelism, and the influence upon the plain people, 
and certainly upon the very poor, is bad; but it looks as 
though the excrescences incident to new and great under- 
takings were being brought to the level of right and to the 
bar of the law. 

The standards which ought to be applied to new situa- 
tions are becoming more clearly understood and more 
firmly established, and the demand for their enforcement 
is one which no public officer dare trifle with. And on the 
whole, munificence outruns meanness, and the purpose 
to be a decent citizen and of some real use in the world 
was never stronger or more pointed than it is now being 
made in this country by the leveling and inspiring influence 
of American public opinion. 

We ought not to forget either that we know more, at 
least we read more, of the badness than of the goodness 
that is among us, because the newspapers find it more 
profitable to publish it, and the newspapers are in every 
hand. But every one knows that there is infinitely more 
goodness than badness in the crowd, and it is by no means 
certain that the laying bare of what is wrong does not 
develop the purpose to punish it, rather than the disposi- 
tion to participate in it. 

Men and women are the creatures of environment and 
of work, and the character of a whole people is marvel- 
ously influenced by the institutions under which they live 
and the privileges which they become accustomed to ex- 
ercise. No one can fail to know that this is the land of 
opportunity, and few can fail to see that people are up- 
lifted by doing things; and the percentage of those who 
degenerate or amount to nothing is smaller than it would 
be without the freedom of opportunity and the prizes and 



338 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

responsibilities which accompany results. This is a poor 
country for one who believes that people must be kept 
from the activities and temptations of life to build character 
aright. It is a good country for those who have confidence 
in the qualities which God has implanted in human nature, 
and are not apprehensive about the evolution of those 
qualities to their logical possibilities. 

With tolerance as the groundwork of our American life, 
our judgment of personal conduct has become less severe. 
There is reason enough to believe that it has become more 
just. We have come to admit the good, as well as the bad, 
in men whose lives do not move in the same grooves as 
our own, and of whose habits we are often bound to dis- 
approve. 

Our standards change, but the change does not imperil 
the moral situation. Surely we see some things a little more 
clearly than our good fathers did, and let us not forget 
that we see them more clearly because the progress of our 
country has clarified the atmosphere through which we 
have to look. 

It must be admitted that the police power is not exer- 
cised in this country as in the older countries which main- 
tain large armies, have many great cities, and are thor- 
oughly accustomed to the constant and harsh rule of the 
military and the police. We are fretted by the delays in 
the execution of laws which can hardly keep pace with 
advances in population and the multiplying complexities 
of our civilization; but we want no standing army except 
to meet necessities for protection against insurrection, and 
no police system which is not keyed to the spirit of the 
country. The popular confidence in democratic govern- 
ment is absolute, and wherever there is any real exigency 
the resources of the country prove equal to it. 

The liberalizing which has been going on generally has 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 339 

of course extended to the children and to the schools. 
There is less control in the schools. A liberalized phi- 
losophy of education may have gone to extremes. It is to 
be feared that children are less respectful and obedient 
than was once the case. They, too, partake of what goes 
on about them, but of the good as well as of the bad ; and 
as they advance in years the most of them get more of 
the good than the bad. On the whole, however, children 
live more rational lives; the influences of intellectual cul- 
ture have marvelously augmented ; there is a wider range 
of healthful sports; there are less whining and sniveling; 
the value of work is taught. Every influence of the school is 
distinctly moral, and children are made to know, just as 
well as they can know, what are the conditions of success 
and of gaining respect in the world. Even though the 
superficial faults are more manifest, are not the funda- 
mental virtues more sure ? 

And, whether or not morals are better or worse than 
they used to be, when was it determined that the homes 
and the churches might shift to the schools the responsi- 
bility for a distinct moral and religious training ? There is 
some reason for believing that, in general, parents are more 
derelict than teachers about the conduct of children ; and 
if there is any reason to fear that the work of some of the 
churches is less vitalizing and controlling than it might be, 
it is desirable that a frank and searching analysis of the 
reasons should be made by those who are in a situation 
to make it. 

The schools do not dictate our policies ; they follow them. 
They do not determine our civilization ; they respond to it. 
The public schools are certainly secular. They must avoid 
sectarian contentions, and church distinctions, and the 
mere theology about which religious scholars often indulge 
in combat for their intellectual health. But the schools 



340 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

cannot avoid the enforcement of moral conduct, the ex- 
empHfication of the basis of correct hving, and the exploi- 
tation of religious principles. They will go as far in this 
as they are allowed to go. And they ought to be able to 
go a long way without invading the exclusive domain of 
the religious denominations. 

Let the Bible be read in the schools and let songs of 
praise be sung, until some external authority forbids. Let 
the schools be a little more forceful in control, and a little 
more specific in commanding obedience and respect. Let 
them seek with new earnestness to create motive in the 
mind of the child. Let them accentuate the vital need of 
work which rests upon men and women ; and the vital im- 
portance of their lending a hand to others and giving ser- 
vice to the village and the city, the state and the nation. Let 
them never forget that there can be no real strength, either 
moral or physical, without the opportunity to do, and 
without both doing what is rational and right and resisting 
what is senseless or wrong. And let them realize, more 
and more keenly, that the way to put all this into the 
hearts and heads of children is by the teachers thinking it, 
and by the schools acting upon it themselves. Above all, 
let it be remembered that character must go with intelli- 
gence, and that character is not a mere matter of form, but 
a drawing out of the spirit into helpful relations with the 
world. 

All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul. 

And whatever the schools do, let them do it with a pur- 
pose to give no offense to any whose thought and outlook 
are not exactly like their own. 

All manner of schools, of every kind and under all aus- 
pices, constitute the educational system of America. That 
system is the freest and the most flexible and adaptable 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 341 

of the educational systems of the world. It is developing 
broad and strong scholarship. Its doors swing to every 
one. It is showing what a people can do for their own 
advancement, and what it has already done is the best 
proof of what it yet can do. 

There is no ground for apprehension. We have a sense 
of humor and the courage of our convictions. We are devel- 
oping institutions to promote our every thought. There is 
overwhelming good, unmeasured progress, and little that 
is bad, in our laws and institutions. We inherited much 
from the mother country, and we have gathered much from 
all countries; but we have done more for ourselves than 
any other land ever did for us. And, "We, the people," 
have done it. No monarch, no sect, no professional or 
other class, has either been asked to permit or allowed to 
limit us in doing it. The Declaration of Independence 
and the Articles of Confederation declared in the name 
of the states; but in the Constitution "we, the people," 
established the more perfect Union. And the laws of the 
Union and the constitutions and laws of all the states 
declare so plainly that they come from the same great 
source, that no representative or officer of any standing can 
be so blind as to fail to see it, or so stupid as to obstruct 
the opinion of the country. There is no fiction about it; 
it is a serious, pervasive, continuing fact. And the people 
could not exercise all of this freedom, and bear all of this 
burden, without the mixing and the training of common 
schools, reaching from the kindergarten to the university. 

This is a poor country for one who lives wholly in him- 
self. It is a good country for all who trust in God and have 
confidence in men and women. There is no better religious 
teacher in America than Henry Van Dyke, and we are 
glad to join in the refrain of the song he wrote upon his 
return from a voyage to Europe : — 



342 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me, 
My heart is turning home again to God's countrie. 
To the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars 
Where the air is full of sunshine and the flag is full of stars. 

So it's home again and home again, America for me. 

My heart is turning home again to God's countrie. 

To the blessed land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars 

Where the air is full of sunshine and the flag is full of stars. 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 

We are accustomed to say that the teacher makes the 
school, and we say it rightly. Then the spirit of the teacher 
makes the spirit of the school. We are wont to dwell upon 
the competency of the teacher and to multiply and empha- 
size the instrumentalities which enhance it. When we 
speak of the qualifications of the teacher, the practical 
mind goes to intellectual strength, to knowledge of affairs, 
and to scholarly attainments; and the professional mind 
thinks of these and also of psychological investigations 
and of pedagogical training and experience. No teacher 
can be proficient whose scholarship is not broader and 
deeper than the mere routine of her grade. One who has 
no understanding of the history of education, of the pro- 
cesses of mind growth, of the methods which experience 
has shown to produce desirable results, and whose mind is 
not strong enough to stand alone, move forward by its own 
motion and think out things on its own account, is only a 
plodder and no teacher at all. But even this is not all. There 
is another element in the essential equipment of a good 
teacher. If more difficult to describe, if more troublesome 
to cultivate, it is even more indispensable to the happiness 
of the individual, to her influence upon others, and to the 
effectiveness and f ruitfulness of her work. It is the power 
which moves the machinery of life, the motive which in- 
spires action, and the quality of the faith which character- 
izes works. The heart as well as the mind is involved in the 
vocation of the teacher. The emotional as well as intel- 
, lectual elements of human nature necessarily play impor- 



344 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tant parts in the work of training others. By the spirit is 
meant the emotional nature held and guided by reason; 
the intellectual nature propelled and determined by the 
nobler emotions. It is not the physical nature. The body 
without the spirit is dead. The spirit is the life-principle, 
the immortal part, the power-producing part, the energy, 
the vivacity, the ardor, the attachments, the courage, which 
determines what shall be undertaken, and then puts its hand 
to the accomplishment of that end with a power which 
makes achievement inevitable. Spirit sees opportunities; 
it recognizes occasions ; it acts with spontaneity when the 
time comes. It manifests itself according to circumstances 
and necessities. The spirit of the teacher is vital to the 
public school system of the country. It must be effective 
in its consequences and accomplishments. It must be pure, 
fine, strong, spontaneous, versatile, the ever present sup- 
port of the school, and the never failing inspiration of the 
noblest aspirations of the human family, for whose promo- 
tion the school system exists. 

Certain characteristic qualities mark the spirit of the 
teacher and the spirit of the schools. 

First, the spirit of the teacher should be characterized 
by culture. The teacher has had some early educational 
advantages, surely. The foundations have been at least 
fairly well laid. There is something to build upon. The 
powers of the mind have, at least, been set in operation. 
Opportunities have been frequent and constant. Habits of 
inquiry and investigation have been acquired. Surround- 
ings have been favorable; there have been some results. 
Taste has been aroused and it has grown. Then, the 
work of the teacher has been for others. She has endeav- 
ored to open the minds of her pupils and arouse their 
powers. She has become interested in them. She has wit- 
nessed the development of the human powers; she has 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 345 

seen minds open and souls grow. This start in life, this 
environment, and this experience must have had a re- 
fining influence upon her own mind and her own soul. 
With all the tribulations and annoyances, if the true 
teacher has developed, the immortal part of her nature will 
show purity, strength, breadth of information, variety of 
accomplishment, power of discrimination, delicacy of feel- 
ing and nobility of bearing, which will be recognized in 
all intellectual and cultivated centres. The gross and the 
coarse, common to all human nature, will be eliminated 
gradually ; the language, the manners, the style will change ; 
the life will be keyed to the music of the humanities ; the 
soul will aspire to the heights of the sublime. 

The child is not an inanimate, unfeeling thing. He is 
a live, active, sensitive being. If he possesses the elements 
of future growth, he is a willful, perverse, troublesome 
being. He may be lovable, he may be repellent. He may 
be defective in physical or mental organization; he may be 
unfortunate in home surroundings. Whatever the condi- 
tions, he is in the hands of the teacher to be developed and 
trained. He is not alone; the same teacher has fifty other 
similar charges. The parental feeling is absent. Yet the 
child is altogether subject to her. Within her sphere she 
is an autocrat. She may manage wisely, kindly, and justly, 
and commonly she does. She may rule with rank injustice, 
and frequently she does. She may act with kindly purpose, 
and yet injustice may result. She may be taxed to the limit 
of strength and endurance. She may be inexperienced. 
She may have wandered into a state of chronic severity 
and fretfulness. She may have dyspepsia and mistake it 
for principle. But no matter what the circumstances, her 
power is unlimited. The continuous exercise of power 
over inferior or younger minds is unmistakably dwarfing. 
The tendency to favoritism is natural. The teacher is in 



846 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

this regard at least not so very different from other people. 
Government in the school-room is so absolute that the 
danger is apparent. A word, a mark, a look may be the 
effective instrument of injustice, and injustice inflicts a 
deep wound upon the temperament of the child. He has 
keener perception and deeper feeling than is commonly 
supposed. The child's troubles seem trivial to adults, but 
they are real to him ; his suffering is acute. Yet he has no 
appeal; he is without redress; if he has been the subject 
of mistakes or mistreatment it is thought to be a mistake to 
tell him of it. It is not a question of whether there might 
be, for there is injustice in the schools. 

That there is no more is owing to the large element of 
kindness which is developed in the spirit of the true teacher. 
There is no danger of too much of it. There is no possi- 
bility of erring on the right side. There can be none too 
much justice meted out to childhood. But kindness means 
more than justice. Equal and exact justice is the right of 
every child in the schools and he knows it. It is not a mere 
question of rights, however. Contact and association with 
pupils should not be prevented. They are entitled to a time 
when they may make explanations and prefer requests out- 
side of the class hour and in a familiar and confidential way. 
Matters will go more smoothly if it is allowed. It means 
everything to the pupil ; it may mean much to the teacher. 
Children should be helped up to manhood and woman- 
hood and good citizenship. Kindness will unlock the heart 
of the child and uplift his soul. It will gain his allegiance 
and draw out the best that is in him. It should be ever 
present. The stream should never fail. It should increase 
in volume and in power. It will make the school-room 
attractive to the teacher and to the pupil ; it will render 
the teacher's name a fragrant memory in the pupil's later 
years, and when life's lengthened shadows encompass 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 347 

her, it will light her pathway up to the Invisible and the 
Unknown. 

Kindness in the school means courtesy to the public. It 
is not always easy to render it. Teachers are brought in 
contact with all manner of people, the ignorant and rude 
as well as the cultured. They meet people most commonly 
upon a subject concerning which they are much interested 
and most sensitive, and about which there is danger of 
misinterpretation, for their own children are the inform- 
ants. The circumstances are frequently trying. However, 
there is but one course to pursue. Patience should never 
fail. If the treatment of the child has been kindly, if the 
teacher's duty has been fully discharged, disagreeable in- 
terviews will not be numerous, and when one occurs there 
will be no occasion to fear. In any event, and upon all 
occasions, the person who stands as the representative of 
the public school system should treat every one with whom 
her work brings her in contact, and especially the parents 
of her pupils, with considerate attention and courtesy. It 
is not for her to assume an attitude of antagonism or of 
disagreeable superiority; she is neither to be nor to ap- 
pear indifferent ; she is not to say things which will wound 
the parent concerning his child, when unnecessary, even 
though they are true. She is to smooth out troubles, she 
is to help the parent and the child, and she is to show that 
she is anxious to help them. She is to do it because it is 
the right thing to do, and because it is in her heart to do 
it. She is to do it with real and true diplomacy. Her spirit 
in this regard and ability in these directions will be a very 
excellent measure of her strength and fitness as a teacher. 
If she fails here she will weaken her position beyond 
recovery, and ought to. But a spirit which radiates kind- 
ness to the pupil and courtesy to the public will make her 
secure. 



348 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

If there is any one spirit which should be uppermost in 
the work of the schools, it is the spirit of truth. 

There is nothing so kingly as kindness, 
There is nothing so royal as truth. 

Truth is the foundation of character. The other virtues 
rest upon it. If the principle of truth is established, the 
other elements of an honorable career will be likely to fol- 
low along in their own good time. Therefore, the spirit of 
the teacher must be the spirit of truth ; the truth must be 
held up to the admiration of the school ; and all things must 
be done to give it an abiding-place in the lives of all. 

There is no unpardonable sin in childhood, and therefore 
falsehood is not an unpardonable sin with children. It is a 
very common one ; it is a very trying and reprehensible one. 
It should be made the sin of sins among children, and the 
power of the schools should be centred upon the correction 
of the evil. If the public schools could bestow even the 
elements of an education upon every American child, and 
could make a sound regard for the truth an element in his 
character, American citizenship would be safe, and the 
Republic would stand as long as governments continue 
upon the earth. 

The teacher should not fail to act the truth. She should 
not pretend to know things she does not know. She should 
not insist upon things about which she is uncertain. Even 
a child does not expect a teacher to be the embodiment of 
all wisdom. If she claims it, he knows she is masquerading ; 
if she admits a doubt, he knows she is acting truly ; he sees 
that he and his teacher have some things in common ; she 
has a stronger hold upon him. 

A boy handed up his written spelling lesson for correc- 
tion. The teacher marked a word as incorrect, which he 
thought was spelled correctly. He gathered up his courage 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 349 

and told her he thought she had made a mistake. She 
brushed him aside with an indignant remark, about doubt- 
ing her ability to spell. In ten minutes he saw her engaged 
in profound communion with the dictionary. He gained 
coniBdence. She said nothing, but seemed dejected. He 
put his paper in his pocket and went home, and consulted 
his dictionary. He had spelled the word correctly. She had 
lost his good opinion forever. It was a serious loss, but 
who shall say that she did not pay the proper penalty for 
her act. She had made a mistake. It was not serious at the 
outset. It was a comparatively small matter that she had 
an erroneous impression about the spelling of the word. 
But persistence after she knew better was acting an untruth. 
It was utterly inexcusable. It was impolitic too. Suppose 
she had given him only what was his due and said, " My 
boy, I was hasty and wrong about that ; you were right ; I 
will have to be more careful next time." He would have 
been exultant, but that would not have humiliated her. 
She would have gained his respect and his friendship as 
well. 

There is mathematical accuracy about the truth. It 
always fits together. There is no safe compromise ground. 
The danger signal is upon the border line. Truth or un- 
truth may be acted as well as spoken. It is not necessary at 
all times to tell all that is true. But whatever is said and 
whatever is done in the schools, is to be open and straight- 
forward, wholly within the bounds of truth. 

In nothing more than in this matter does the spirit of the 
teacher make the tone of the school. A premium should be 
put upon the truth. A child's word should never be 
doubted lightly or for insufficient reason. It is better to 
expect and assume that he will tell the truth. If he is 
trusted, it will help him. If he is forgiven for his short- 
comings and rewarded with the teacher's entire confidence. 



350 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

he will tell tlie exact truth. Then the spirit of truth will 
flourish in the school and character will grow under the 
roof. 

In the plan of the old education the school was a place 
of detention, the work was only routine, and the teacher 
was the embodiment of force. In the plan of the new educa- 
tion the school is a workshop ; the teacher is a helper ; all 
are to do original work together. The new plan is infinitely 
better than the old. The teacher will be a learner; the 
teacher must be a learner. Upon no other principle can 
the work proceed. The stream will dry up unless it be 
continually augmented. The power will give out unless it 
is constantly reinforced. 

The teacher should be herself; she should be natural. 
She should not be over-serious. Children are children. 
Nature should be let in, — human nature, and animal na- 
ture, and vegetable nature. How it will bring interest to the 
work of the schools ! How it will open the minds of the 
children, give them affection for animal life, and send them 
hunting in the fields and the woods for the products of na- 
ture ! The spirit of the school may well copy the spirit of a 
well-ordered home, where all interests are the same, where 
all the members have common rights, where the weak or 
the unfortunate are given the most help, where natural 
characteristics find ready expression, and all work plea- 
surably and happily together for the common good. 

One of the most unmistakable tendencies of school work 
is to warp the temperament of the teacher. A life which is 
devoted to teaching must be upon its guard. If not, it is 
likely to drift into a petulant and ascetic state, and then 
its power for usefulness is almost destroyed. If it avoids 
the danger, it will grow richer and stronger, happier and 
more potent for good, with the accumulating years. 

Cheerfulness of spirit is the product of a kind heart and 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 351 

a wise head. It is an invaluable product. It is as vital to 
the healthful development of child nature as water and 
sunshine are to the healthful growth of plants. The school- 
room where good cheer does not reign is a desolate place, 
and the children who occupy it are objects of sympathy. 
Child-life is impressionable. It needs help. It responds 
quickly. Deny it the light and warmth and it will be 
stunted and dwarfed; it may be utterly ruined. Nourish it 
and it will be the noblest work of the Almighty. Like begets 
like. A solemn, funereal, and complaining teacher develops 
peevish, fretful, and disagreeable children. Fretfulness is 
ill-mannered; it is no less ill-mannered in a teacher than in 
any other person; it is even more so, for it reproduces 
itself; it makes ill-mannered children. Cheerfulness is 
contagious also. It extends, reproduces, and perpetuates 
itself. It will make the desert blossom as the rose. As chil- 
dren need it, so they love it. They drink it in, brighten up, 
look heavenward, and. begin to grow. It calls out the best 
that is in them. The better and nobler tendencies gain 
strength and exert their influence upon others. One cannot 
be too thankful for a sunny and buoyant temperament. It 
may be acquired. It is an acquisition even more imperative 
to a teacher's work than a knowledge of English or mathe- 
matics. It will bring her happiness and give her power. 
The character of the teacher must be steady. There must 
be self-control. The spirit must be courageous. It must 
understand the ground it occupies and maintain it. It 
must know the course it is to pursue and hold to it. It need 
not be unduly elated, and certainly it must not be unduly 
cast down by the daily incidents of the school. It must 
remember that there have been other days and that there 
will be other days. It must not fret or worry over common- 
place matters. It must meet its responsibilities squarely, 
promptly. It must keep moving ahead. Even if a duty of 



352 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

unusual import falls upon the teacher she need not go into 
a decline over it. There is no occasion even then for specu- 
lating upon the unfathomable or reaching after the unat- 
tainable. She is to meet it without reflecting more than a 
week upon it, without discussing it until undue mystery 
and trouble seem to encompass it. She is to act deliberately, 
with the best sense she has and in the best way she can. 
No one expects more. Ninety-nine times in a hundred, it 
will be all right. In the hundredth time some one will 
help her make it all right. She must have her wits about 
her, and rise to meet any unusual occasion. She must be 
strong and steady enough to be counted upon; she must 
have the reliability which is the foundation of confidence. 
All this is somewhat a matter of character, somewhat a 
matter of experience. If the purposes are sound there is 
nothing to fear. Mistakes are comparatively few and of 
small consequence if the head is clear and the heart all 
right. He who never makes mistakes never accomplishes 
things. The teacher who pushes on steadily, hopefully, 
doing things as they may come to her hand, thinking of 
things which ought to be done, will gather strength and 
confidence, will gain standing and influence, and will 
steady the whole system and support the entire work. 

The spirit of patriotism must pervade the schools. It 
has come into them with new strength and meaning in 
recent years. It is to be encouraged by every proper 
instrumentality. The instrumentality more potent than 
any other is the soul and spirit of the teacher. Emerson 
said it made not so much difference what one studied as 
with whom he studied. Flags are of small moment except 
as they are suggestive and emblematical. All the bullet- 
riddled battle flags which the gallant soldiers of the Union 
armies carried so proudly up the great avenue of the Cap- 
ital City on the famous review at the close of the Rebel- 



THE SPIRIT OF THE TEACHER 353 

lion may be displayed in the schools and the effect will be 
lost unless the teacher knows American history, unless she 
can recall the cost and understands the value of our distin- 
guishing American institutions, unless she sees at a glance 
what the flag means, unless her spirit is attuned and her 
feet keep step to the music of the Union. But if she does 
know, and if she does see, and if she does feel, there will 
indeed be patriotism in the school, flag or no flag. 

Other nations understand this and act upon it. In 
Germany the teacher is, in law, an officer of the state, is 
sworn to support the government, obey its laws, and pro- 
mote its interests in all conceivable ways. The arrange- 
ment of the room, the books that are used, the songs that 
are sung, all the words spoken and all the things done, are 
made to give significance to the three-colored flag and con- 
tribute to the greatness of the Fatherland. In France no 
person can enter the service of the schools who is not a na- 
tive Frenchman. Every precaution is observed to have the 
heart of the teacher pulsate in harmony with the heart of 
the state, and every means is taken to bring the help of 
the teacher to the support of the state. 

The public school system has come to be the main hope 
of our nation. It is the national stomach bound to digest all 
kinds of national food and make pure blood. It is to assimi- 
late all kinds of people and convert them into good citizens. 
In this American system of schools the predominant char- 
acteristics of our future American citizenship are being, and 
must continue to be, developed. 

The responsibility is appalling, but the public school can 
meet it. There is ground for the belief. The spirit of the 
teacher must throb with the spirit of this work. She must 
enter into the purposes of the state. She must know the 
proud story of the national life ; she must be familiar with 
its literature ; she must be able to tell the achievements of 



S54 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

its great men who have borne the burdens of its councils 
or offered their Hves for its life; she must understand the 
plan and framework of the government ; she must value our 
distinguishing institutions and sympathize with the true 
spirit and the aspirations of the American Republic, like 
which there is none other in the world ; she must discern 
the danger points; she must make every child under her 
influence so proud of the American name that he will hold 
it in jealous keeping, and so loyal to the flag that if need 
be, he will carry it through the blaze of battle. 



VI 

THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 

People are coming to realize that no school can be good, 
can do what it ought for their children or for the common 
good, can prepare for the rivalries of life, satisfy civic pride, 
or connect with the schools to which it is tributary, unless 
it is constantly on the lookout for the best teachers; and 
that the great systems of schools in the cities must measur- 
ably fail and be discredited unless the management is hon- 
est, intelligent, alert, and persistent in purging and reen- 
forcing and toning up the teaching service. Nothing in our 
national life is more gratifying or encouraging than the 
steadily increasing demand for the best teaching. Perhaps 
the discouragements enlarge and multiply in places, but 
discriminating judgment upon the work of the schools, with 
an unqualified insistence upon more scientific methods, is 
plainly outrunning the difficulties, and the search for the 
best teachers in all grades of educational work is sharp in 
all parts of the country. ' 

On the other hand, teachers are not and should not be 
indifferent to more dignified positions, to larger opportuni- 
ties, and to higher pay. 

The quest for the best teachers and the desire for the best 
places bring into the matter some third parties who for a 
consideration are willing to give their services to help 
things along. It also leads to some overreaching on the part 
of officers of institutions, to some indirection on the part of 
teachers, and perhaps to not a little healthful annoyance 
and embarrassment all around. 

There is the teachers' agency. Its business may be and 



356 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

frequently is perfectly legitimate, high-minded, and helpful 
to the different interests concerned ; it may and frequently 
does resort to flattery, to influence, and to coercion to secure 
a place for a client for what there is in it for him and for it. 
It keeps a list of teachers with a statement of the leading 
points in the personal and professional career of each, with 
letters of commendation from the previous teachers, pas- 
tors, friends, and employers of each, and when a desirable 
vacancy, or the possibility of one, comes in sight it has, 
dependent upon its peculiar methods, the material with 
which to aid an institution, a good cause, and a good 
teacher, or the ammunition with which to make a strategic 
assault for the plunder there is in it. Some agencies fre- 
quently recommend to institutions before they ask and 
sometimes recommend teachers who have not become their 
clients at all. At times the most abhorrent methods are 
employed, and bills are presented which are based upon no 
real service. No sweeping allegation is made against these 
agencies. There is a legitimate work for them. Educated, 
keen, conservative, and honorable men are in charge of 
some of them, but the business is peculiarly beset with 
temptations, and it is difficult for a man to pursue it a long 
time and deal justly by the different interests he undertakes 
to serve. 

There are many so-called teachers who are everlastingly 
manoeuvring for larger pay. They play a game of petty 
politics and ordinarily lose at it. They have "calls" with 
very slight foundations for them. They are the coquettes 
of the profession, and before long they bring up in the same 
place relatively where the social flirt in time finds herself. 
To be sure, a teacher may properly desire better opportu- 
nities and larger pay. The true teacher cannot help it, 
because of what these things may do for him. But it may 
be safely said that the teacher is to demonstrate his worth 



THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 357 

by quiet and fruitful work, and is to permit himself to be 
sought for rather than to be seeking a better place. A true 
woman seeking a wealthy husband would be no less anoma- 
lous than a true teacher hunting for a better place. 

The quantity and quality of recommendations given to 
candidates for places by people of some prominence in 
community life or in educational work are amusing if not 
appalling. They are given to the candidate to carry in his 
pocket or file with a teachers' agency. They provide him 
with a " character." They are practically alike. The one 
from the local pastor or school trustee is not very different 
f ro^ the one from a normal principal or a college professor. 
They certify the commonplaces which no one doubts, but 
pass by the real points one of intelligence wants to know. 
The pastor and trustee do not know the defects, and the 
principals and professors are generous in the way of silence. 
So the credentials are strong on generalities and weak on 
particularities. They make much of the passive virtues, 
and say little or nothing about the shortcomings or the 
faults. Perhaps they are generally harmless; possibly, no 
one pays serious attention to them. Still it should be re- 
membered that they are deceiving unless in experienced 
hands, and the likelihood of getting into inexperienced 
hands is considerable. And they discredit the writers. It 
may be surmised, also, that they really weaken the candi- 
dates by giving them false estimates of themselves and 
leading them to depend upon credentials rather than upon 
their work. If the rule were generally adopted that letters 
of recommendation would not be given to the candidates 
themselves, but that all inquiries from other parties inter- 
ested would be patiently and completely and flatly an- 
swered, it would likely be better for all the parties con- 
cerned. 

There is another interest that is now pushing itself force- 



358 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

fully into the field, and that comes from the desire of the 
leading universities to place their graduates in schools, not 
only to aid the graduates, but to extend the university influ- 
ence and gain wider support. This tendency is legitimate 
and commendable if methods are within bounds ; but the 
temptations are very great and the flesh is sometimes weak. 
The value of college or university agents in schools that are 
naturally, or may be made, tributary gives an unwonted 
unction to the fervor of the letters that are written by 
officials and professors in behalf of fledgling graduates. 
Doubtless this thing reaches its most uncomfortable pro- 
portions as between the eastern universities and the ad- 
vanced institutions of the West. The western schoolmen 
are well informed as to educational conditions in the East. 
Many of them formerly lived in or were educated in the 
East. They travel eastward frequently, and they read 
eastern educational literature constantly. But the igno- 
rance of eastern schoolmen touching the conditions in and 
the demands of the western schools is capable of great 
things in the way of efforts to aid their intellectual children, 
when incited to deeds of daring by the hope that ample 
rewards will come back to them after some days. 

Because the western schools are hunting every corner of 
the United States and offering good wages for the very 
best teachers, it seems to be assumed in the East that any 
sprig with a printed thesis and a degree from an institution 
upon the Atlantic slope will suffice to fill any western place. 
Youngsters who go out to try it too often find to their 
humiliation that some one has overreached or blundered. 
Instead of making conquests because the conditions are 
low and movements slow, they find themselves in a glowing 
atmosphere, among a vigorous and unconventional people 
whose ways and thoughts and aspirations they have diffi- 
culty in comprehending. If we could show the letters writ- 



THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 359 

ten to help graduates in one column, and could parallel 
this with another showing the results, the comparison 
would be salutary in more ways than one. Surely, if all 
interested could mentally grasp all that is going on in this 
line, there would be much enlightenment and entertain- 
ment, if not inspiration, for a multitude of people. 

There is nothing very surprising about all this. As the na- 
tions are looking and some of them jBghting for commerce, 
so the universities are looking and some of them fighting 
for students. There is no doubt that the higher learning 
will be centralized in great institutions. Modern methods 
of instruction and the opportunities which the discrimi- 
nating educational public demands make this inevitable. 
Some smaller institutions will survive on their merits; it 
will be because they do not try to do everything, but under- 
take a few specific lines of work and carry those as effi- 
ciently at least as the leading universities can hope to do. 
The universities which get the lead now will be likely to 
hold it. Large attendance, as well as multiplicity and excel- 
lence of work, will give them the lead. Agents on the 
ground from which students go are serviceable and perhaps 
necessary in getting students. There are no university 
agents so effective as graduates in other universities and in 
the colleges and high schools. Universities understand this, 
and their faculties work industriously to place these agents. 
It is not too much to say that one's standing in a university 
faculty is helped in considerable measure by his success in 
placing his graduates as teachers. There is nothing repre- 
hensible about this. On the contrary, it shows the foresight 
and energy and alertness of the times. But under pressure 
and for lack of systematic policy, because of presidential or 
professional rather than institutional action in the premises, 
and particularly because there has been no inter-institu- 
tional discussion of the principles which should control, 



360 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

there have been much confusion, many misfits, and in- 
numerable complaints. 

Harvard University is entitled to the credit of having 
initiated a genuine effort to systematize her work in this 
connection. Her great place in American education sub- 
jects her to many calls for information concerning teachers 
wanted by other institutions : she has the advantage of posi- 
tion gained by a broad policy followed for a long time and 
followed vigorously, and no one would ever suspect that the 
administration of Harvard would not know, or would be 
slow in acting upon, what would be to her advantage. Jn 
answering these calls, and in pushing her children into 
places, it must be said that she has usually spoken with 
marked and commendable caution. It is much to say that 
in speaking of their own educational offspring the officers 
and teachers of a university are able to come somewhere 
near the truth. It cannot be said of all universities. Har- 
vard ordinarily does this, and she has gone further and 
undertaken doubly to guard what shall be said of her 
graduates by any of her people, by putting the whole 
matter in the hands of a committee of the faculty and thus 
making the commendations of students official, represen- 
tative of the university, and so impersonal and conserva- 
tive. 

It would not be surprising, however, if a faculty com- 
mittee breaking out new roads should get upon some trails 
from which it might better turn back. This committee 
" gets places for young men just going out from the univer- 
sity, and it also endeavors to serve graduates of some years' 
standing who, being already in positions which answer 
their purpose, are nevertheless competent for higher work 
at higher pay." It is this second function, or the method of 
discharging it, to which exception is taken. The method 
has been to write the heads of institutions employing 



THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 361 

Harvard men, without any special moving cause, and with- 
out disclosing any specific purpose, asking in a general 
way how her men are doing, and then use the replies to 
help the men referred to to higher places at higher pay. 
It does not seem that it is sufiicient justification for this 
proceeding to say that it is in the interests of education 
that able men shall advance as rapidly as possible from 
lower to higher places, and that it is the business of edu- 
cational institutions, who are obliged to husband their 
resources, to be generous. 

Even if both these propositions were conceded, it might 
be pertinently asked with whom is the right of initiative in 
moving a teacher from a lower position to a higher. Is it 
not with the people charged with the duty of filling the 
higher position ? They may properly solicit him, and if 
they do and their position is really one of larger opportuni- 
ties for him and for education, and it becomes apparent 
that he is adapted to it, then he might well be disposed to 
go, and the institution with which he has been associated 
should take obstacles out of his path and send him higher 
with hearty congratulations and good will. But is he to be 
encouraged to fiirt with opportunities ? Steadiness and con- 
tentment are as important to education as moving a teacher 
from a lower to a higher position. A sense of obligation 
to surrounding conditions, a knowledge of and a keen 
appreciation of the binding efl^ect of legal obligations, a 
matter-of-course purpose to fulfill moral obligations com- 
pletely, is no less essential to educational progress than 
the advancement of teachers from one position to another. 
Certainly, educational institutions are to be generous, but 
with whose effects besides their own "? Educational insti- 
tutions are to be just to the particular interests for which 
they stand as well as generous to the general interests of 
education. And who is to be the judge of the depth of the 



362 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

resources, or the measure and direction of educational 
generosity, but the people who are to give? 

Educational maternalism is as undesirable as govern- 
mental paternalism. The time comes for college students 
to be put out of the nest and told that unless they can dig 
their own worms they will be in danger of going without 
their breakfasts. It may be all right for their school mother 
to tell them where the worms are and show them how to 
scratch, and even to dig out the first worm for them, but 
certainly after all that they should be allowed to do things 
all by themselves, or take the consequences. There will 
be stronger men and women, more contentment and sta- 
bility, broader work, and greater satisfaction in the schools, 
if that is done. 

There are some fundamental principles which may well 
govern institutions and teachers and third parties in their 
dealings concerning teachers' positions. 

An agreement between a board or an institution and a 
teacher is a legal contract. Both the institution and the 
teacher are bound to its fulfillment in honor and in law. 
An institution which would dismiss a teacher in the midst 
of a term of employment, unless for immorality, pro- 
nounced incompetency, or manifest inability to perform 
his part of the agreement, would act very reprehensibly and 
unlawfully. And a teacher who would insist upon vacating 
a position in the midst of a term of employment because 
of an opportunity to get another position with better advan- 
tages or larger pay would act no less reprehensibly and 
unlawfully. 

Whether an agreement once entered into shall be abro- 
gated before it is fulfilled is to be left to the free discretion 
of the parties. Practically the only time when this question 
is raised is when a teacher may go to a larger place. It is 
strange how many teachers who would think it a great out- 



THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 363 

rage for a board to dismiss them in the middle of a term, 
also think it a great wrong if a board is unwilling to allow 
them to break their agreements when they jQnd it advan- 
tageous to do so. As a teacher's efficiency is so much 
dependent upon his spirit and contentment, institutions are 
accustomed to say that "if he has made up his mind he 
wants to go he might as well be allowed to do so, and we 
will supply the vacancy as best we can." It is tantamount 
to saying that "the teacher is hardly expected to be gov- 
erned by the ordinary rules of law and business-dealing 
which apply to other grown persons with capacity to con- 
tract, so we will have to overlook the matter and let him 
go." It may be true that boards of education and heads 
of institutions should be interested in the advancement of 
all true teachers, but it is not true that this is sufficient to 
overthrow all agreements; and the true interests of the 
teaching profession would be seriously injured if it were to 
be so. Teachers are not to be included with minors, and 
lunatics, and feeble-minded folk, and other mental non- 
competents who are excused from the performance of con- 
tracts. It is to be remembered that the rescission of an 
agreement is not a matter of right, that it is hardly a matter 
which one may ask, that it is a matter which addresses 
itself to the free discretion and generous impulses of the 
employing power, and if it is not readily granted the agree- 
ment is to be fulfilled as cheerfully and as completely as if 
the occasion for thinking about its abrogation had not 
arisen at all. 

If the employment of a teacher is not by its terms to end 
at a specific time ; if by rule or usage it continues from term 
to term, or year to year, and if either party desires to ter- 
minate it, there is an honorable mutual obligation to 
advise the other at a considerable time in advance of such 
termination, or as soon as it is decided upon. It is well to 



364 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

remember that it is something of an accomplishment to 
get out of an old position creditably, and so that the old 
place always has a welcome for you. It is an accomplish- 
ment which many do not possess, and it is one which is 
very suggestive of character. 

The first desire of a true teacher must be to advance his 
work and enhance his usefulness. He cannot be indifferent 
to enlarged opportunities with improved facilities. Nor can 
he be indifferent to greater compensation, for that of itself 
means enlarged opportunities. But the certain way to ad- 
vance is to prove one's worth in the place where he is. 
Then he will be known in the region round about and per- 
haps in the whole land if he is strongly successful. He can- 
not be strongly successful unless he is contented, and enthu- 
siastic, and studious, and steady. He must grow, and he 
must be sure and reliable enough to be counted upon. He 
must assimilate with the conditions in which he works. 
One who has his ear to the ground all the while, in the hope 
of hearing a "call," is a nuisance and no teacher at all. 
One who makes use of a call, or an inference, or a wink, 
or something less substantial, to increase his present salary, 
comes little short of being a fraud. Contentment, enthu- 
siasm, loyalty, efficiency, these are the chief elements of a 
teacher's capital. They soon insure recognition, and they 
readily and inevitably command an educational market. 
Then a better place — one of greater opportunities and 
larger pay — will open, and when it does it may well be 
taken. 

The doctrine that the interests of education will be pro- 
moted by the best teachers getting into places of largest 
opportunity will hardly be challenged anywhere. And the 
places of largest opportunity have the right to seek the 
largest men and women. It is the business of any place to 
seek the best material within its reach. There need be no 



THE TEACHER AND THE POSITION 365 

apology for doing it, and there is no occasion for sneaking 
about it. It may well be done with directness and with the 
knowledge of the head or other officers of the institution 
whose interests and serenity may be affected thereby. 
Every facility for obtaining information should be afforded - 
Then the invaders should decide whether they really want 
to lay suit or not, and if they conclude that they do they 
must determine what they can do to make their suit suc- 
cessful. 

There is undoubtedly a perfectly legitimate field of opera- 
tions for teachers' agencies in aiding officers who are in 
quest of teachers and in aiding teachers who are in search of 
places; but, as already suggested, the business is peculiarly 
liable to invite bad methods and lay itself open to criticism. 
Perhaps the agencies sometimes get censure that does not 
belong to them. If an officer allows the belief to grow that 
his favor can be gained only through a certain agency, that 
is his fault more than the fault of the agency. If an institu- 
tion does not sufficiently discount the roseate statements of 
an agency as to the qualities of a candidate the institution 
is as much too slow as the agency is too fast. In the absence 
of intentional fraud such matters afford little real ground 
for complaint; they are incident to all business and in time 
regulate themselves. But the temptation to deliberate 
fraud is great. If an agency assumes to represent one of 
the parties without being authorized, if it intentionally mis- 
states facts, if it makes a claim for pay without rendering 
any service, if it pretends to an influence which it does not 
possess, if it flatters and cajoles and coerces and resorts to 
circuitous and dishonest methods to accomplish its ends, 
it is guilty of fraud. Of course such an agency should be 
shunned. If institutions and teachers would recognize no 
agencies, and tell the fledglings to have nothing to do with 
agencies which are not in the hands of educated men who 



366 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

know the needs of a position and can discern the qualities 
and particularly the adaptiveness of a candidate, and who 
have honesty enough to tell the truth, there would not be 
so many illegitimate concerns to condemn. In a word, 
when agencies try to serve true teachers and intelligently 
and genuinely undertake to meet the needs of the schools 
in the best ways, they are to be encouraged, for they may 
be of real assistance to both interests. 

After all, it is well to remember that the place in which 
a teacher has gained a good reputation is more than likely 
to be the best place for him. Real teachers make positions 
by the work which they do. Few who make a position and 
gain reputation improve the one or enhance the other by 
transfer to a new place. Teaching power, accompanied by 
steadiness and contentment, is certain to bring a teacher 
most precious remuneration which cannot be measured in 
gold. 



VII 

THE SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

The question of what the schools may do to promote the 
peace of the world involves an understanding of the basis 
of world peace. It is a subject about which there is not a 
little mystery and not a little divergent philosophy. 

Never, since the angels first proclaimed " On earth peace ; 
good will toward men," has the hope of universal peace and 
good will seemed so assuring. It is because of the outwork- 
ing of the new Power which the angels then heralded in the 
affairs of men. But the peace and good will were not to be 
without heavy conflict. Christ said, "I came not to send 
peace, but a sword." The sword was to be the necessary 
forerunner of peace. Repeatedly, He foretold the horrors 
which were to follow the unfolding of the new gospel. 
Prophecy has been realized in fact. A new King came into 
human life. True, He was a heavenly King. He regarded 
not the kings of the earth, but they had to regard Him. 
He gained followers at once, and together they propagated 
a philosophy and pursued a course which defied monarchs. 
The monarchs resisted and harassed them, but they 
gained great numbers and became a great force. They 
stirred the thinking as well as the feelings of great peoples. 
All peoples lived in subjection to kings. The power of the 
kings was in the unthinking obedience of their subjects. 
The only argument was brute force. But conviction and 
faith could not be abashed by physical force. The new 
religion was as intellectual as spiritual. Nations were 
actually set in motion. It widened knowledge and sharp- 
ened mentality. Men and women had to think for them- 



368 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

selves, and then their thinking was unlike. Creeds began 
to be framed, and the drawing and the defense of them 
made for logical thinking and trained intellectuality. With 
added numbers and hardening creeds and deepening faith, 
and with all this opposed by nothing but brute force, ag- 
gression was natural and conflict inevitable. Armies broke 
out the road over which freedom and the truth could 
advance to the making of a new order of things. 

The crusades did something for the central European 
nations in the early centuries, as modern invention and 
travel have been doing in our century. The compounding 
of a new nation in Britain a thousand years ago did some- 
thing more. The discovery of America, the consequent 
Spanish dreams of world empire, and the expulsion of Spain 
from the Netherlands did even more, and the German, and 
English, and American, and French revolutions — all se- 
quential — did yet more. And the compounding of yet 
another nation in America, which has practically demon- 
strated the possibility of secure and aggressive popular 
government, with the sense of moral right and the politi- 
cal prescience which could locate the point of equipoise 
between liberty and security, has stridden toward the 
climax of universal peace more decisively than all before. 
It has all been associated with intellectual strength and 
moral advances. Schools and universities and literatures 
and philosophies and systems of laws and professional 
spirit and learning, and endless devices and conveniences 
which are the product of the fact that individualism is hav- 
ing its chance in the world, — all this is the logical unfold- 
ing of a mighty plan which was beyond the ordering of men. 

It has all been marked by force, — the rational and regu- 
lated force of the mass controlling the greedy, impulsive, 
vicious power of the chieftain or the clan. It was impossible 
without physical force, and the force of the Christian peo- 



SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 369 

pies was as righteous as the thinking which called it into 
operation. Gustavus Adolphus and William of Nassau are 
as much entitled to the regard of a peace conference as 
is Luther. Cromwell may be as justly honored there as 
Stratford and Sir Harry Vane. Washington's army was 
as great a moral force as the Continental Congress, whose 
Declaration of Independence it made good. Lincoln's 
armies were as righteous as the Constitution which required 
Lincoln to gather such forces as were necessary to execute 
the laws in all parts of the land. The heroic doings of the 
men and women who made our free democracy possible 
and proved its power to govern, and therefore its right to be, 
are moral assets of the nation and moral stimulants in the 
schools. The obligation of this generation to impress all 
this upon the next generation is as binding as the eternal 
truth itself, and as sacred as a soldier's grave. 

Constitutionalism is the corner stone of the peace of the 
nations, and it will have to be of the peace of the world. 
It has been expanded through armed resistance to brutal 
aggression. It has not yet gone so far as to do away com- 
pletely with the further necessity of force ; it has not made 
the struggles which were the conditions of its birth seem 
wicked ; it has not put a ban upon present and future ag- 
gressiveness. What it has done has been to define and 
assure natural rights by subordinating force to law. It has 
established courts to determine disputes upon principles 
which have sprung out of the wisdom of the ages, and it has 
created officers and forces who, in a systematic and authori- 
tative way, bring the physical strength of all good citizens 
when need be to protect the rights of good and bad. 

Some men and some nations want anything but law, and 
anything but the lawful exercise of the common authority 
against them. Such men in a political society have to be 
controlled ; such nations have to be enlightened. It remains 



370 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

to be seen whether the principle that the constitutional na- 
tions are to exercise control over lawless ones is to prevail 
throughout the world, and if so, in what cases ? 

An American dissents from any doctrine which would 
make men insipid. If a felon breaks into a man's house, the 
law expects the householder to resist, and even approves 
the killing of the intruder should safety seem to demand it. 
That is not only because a man's house is his castle, but to 
the end that other felons may know what to expect. He is 
a weak character and a worthless citizen who sees a brutal 
and irresponsible scoundrel strike a woman and does not 
employ whatever strength he may have to protect her. 
The law would shield her, and it not only expects all good 
citizens to aid it but, in the absence of its authorized 
officers, to execute it as best they can. It required thou- 
sands of years to establish in the law the principle that all 
decent people must stand for the security and the oppor- 
tunity of each, and each for the good of all. It has now 
become firmly established in all well-ordered countries. It 
will be no small matter to make it a virile and accepted 
principle governing the conduct and the relations of nations. 
It was left for democracy to give it its opportunity. The 
rescue of Cuba from Spain by the United States, not for 
gain, much against our interest, and only because it was 
right, has supplied the object lesson which good inter- 
national teaching needs, and it has exemplified a principle 
which is vital to world progress. 

It is perhaps too much to expect that nations will bind 
themselves in advance to accept the determinations of an 
international tribunal. That may be parting with sover- 
eignty, the one thing that nations cannot do. But the 
very fact of participation in setting up an international 
tribunal establishes the purpose to respect it. The fact 
that a case is submitted to it proves the expectation to 



SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 371 

abide by its determination. Nations which take these sol- 
emn steps and then repudiate them, without assigning a 
reason which commends itself to the sense of the world, will 
forfeit the international respect which is alike vital to the 
standing and the strength of nations, and without which 
they are little to be feared. 

The nations have come to live so closely together, the 
news of the world is so widely and quickly known, the 
mind of the world is so enlightened, the moral sense so 
strong, the principles of justice so widely and firmly estab- 
lished, and, withal, war has become so mechanical and 
abhorrent, that it does seem as though there should be 
sufficient agreement among the more progressive nations 
to establish some substantial form of constitutional proced- 
ure among as well as within the nations. It at least ought 
to go so far as to prevent aggressive warfare without just 
cause, or, even with just cause without imperative need. 
All warfare perhaps cannot be avoided. The deliberate 
thought of an enlightened people upon a vital principle 
surely ought to have its way after every other alternative 
has failed. But the educative influence of the endless 
accretion of idle armament and unusable forces is bad ; the 
surplusage of it is exactly opposed to the only legitimate 
purpose of it. 

It would seem that any general and efficient scheme 
for settling international controversies must depend upon : 
(a) ripening public sentiment, (6) a permanent court of 
such exalted character that no people with a just cause 
would fear its determinations, and (c) a written and steadily 
augmenting code of legal principles which ought to govern 
international conduct, both in peace and war. 

The sentiment is crystallizing; the forerunner of the 
court is already in being, and the permanent court seems 
likely ; the code has augmented slowly while its only oppor- 



372 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

tunity was through agreements in treaties or precedents, 
but it will be more rapidly expanded when there is a place 
to submit issues and when determinations are more fre- 
quent. 

This is what the schools may promote. The number of 
teachers in the world is surprising. There are 150,000 in 
Austria-Hungary; as many more in France; 232,000 in 
Germany; 275,000 in the British Isles; 97,000 in Italy; 
30,000 in the Netherlands; 180,000 in Russia; 18,000 in 
Sweden; 13,000 in Switzerland ; a full half million in India ; 
120,000 in Japan ; 30,000 in Canada, and 580,000 in the 
United States. All the other countries, civilized or semi- 
civilized, have their fair proportions. There are clearly 
more than 3,500,000 in all. 

It is a great guild. There is no other such widely dis- 
tributed fraternity in the world. Of course there are all 
kinds in it, but they have much in common. It is their 
business to differ and their delight to discuss, but their 
work brings them into accord upon the essentials of right 
living and of international comity and brotherhood. The 
predisposition of the overwhelming number is not to be 
doubted, and if in some way they could be quickened to 
use their quiet, steady, and indirect influences to substi- 
tute rational determinations for the arbitrament of the 
sword in settling international disputes, it would have a 
telling effect upon the sentiment of the world. It would 
seem as though, with a little governmental favor, official 
records and our free communication, there might be a 
somewhat systematic and potential canvass of the teachers 
of the world in the interest of universal good will and of 
the common regard for definable moral standards, which 
ought to be inviolable in both individual and international 
conduct. 

For example, let it be understood that one nation will not 



SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 373 

be allowed to despoil another for the sake of empire or other 
greed, because it is immoral, and the ordinary motive 
of aggressive warfarewill have disappeared. Again, if it 
could be realized that all men and all governments are 
responsible to one another for the security of each and 
the opportunity of all ; that all government is* necessarily 
a burden, and that each must carry his part of the burden 
according to his strength, then the feeling of comradeship 
in effort would become an impenetrable barrier to unholy 
war. The teachers of the world might, through an organ- 
ized movement, become a very great force in doing all 
this. More thoroughly educated concerning it themselves, 
they would, at least by the indirect influence, which is often 
more telling than the direct, propagate it in all parts of 
the earth. 

The universities may well be counted upon to give point, 
form, and expression to the better sentiment of all countries 
in this behalf. It has a proper place in their offerings ; it is 
attractive to their advanced students, and their teaching is 
bound to give opportunity and impetus to this good move- 
ment. Their research and their publications may well be 
expected to illumine and soundly expand the law of the 
state, and the manifest and growing comity between the 
universities of the more enlightened and powerful nations 
ought to open the way for the extension of constitutional- 
ism to the vital issues which are inevitable in international 
relations. It is particularly so since the better schools of law 
are in organic association with universities, and more par- 
ticularly still it is so since the experts in the universities are 
coming to be the best equipped advisers of nations upon 
technical points in serious international disputes. 

The work of the colleges, and in some mieasure that of 
the secondary schools, may well anticipate that of the pro- 
fessional schools and the universities in this as in other 



374 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

matters. The phases of it which may properly form a part 
of the work of the elementary schools are not obvious. It 
must be said frequently that it is high time that we stopped 
clogging the curricula of the lower schools with so much 
that pupils may learn in one tenth of the time when the 
place for it is reached, — if, indeed, there is any place for it 
at all. If we teach the elements of knowledge and exem- 
plify the elements of good morals in the primary schools, we 
shall not be censured if we omit constitutional law, politi- 
cal history, and international arbitration. 

Of course, there should be nothing in the schools to dis- 
tort the understanding or obscure the outlook of children. 
it has often been said in peace conferences that the text- 
books in the schools emphasize the triumphs .of strife 
rather than the struggles and accomplishments of peace. 
We cannot expect the textbooks to be prepared without 
reference to human interest. The news and magazine 
writers ought not to criticise them for that. The readers 
and histories and geographies, in the texts and the illus- 
trations, exemplify very fairly the struggles and progress 
of all the interests of peace in all parts of the world. The 
literature used by the schools is the best in the world, in- 
finitely more choice than ever before. It is not the literature 
of strife so much as of peace, work, and culture. One who 
is advocating a particular thing is hardly likely to be an 
unbiased judge when his special enthusiasm is involved. 
In recent years there is distinctly discernible in school liter- 
ature a new purpose to magnify accomplishments in the 
arts and sciences, rather than the triumphs of armies. But 
history must be written truly. The boys who have ginger in 
them will have to know what has happened ; they will have 
their opportunity; they will draw conclusions for them- 
selves. The work of the schools makes for independent and 
virile thinking within the limits which hard facts impose, 



SCHOOLS AND INTERNATIONAL PEACE 375 

and therefore for balanced manliness and womanliness, 
more than ever before in human history. 

The mind and heart of the world cherish good will and 
abhor war. But natural rights are cherished more than 
peace, and they will be maintained even though conflicts 
ensue. In well ordered life rights are ordinarily maintained 
and conflicts are avoided by the submission of good citizens 
to the rule of law, by submitting disputes to the decisions 
of courts, and by using the common power to punish the 
undesirable citizens. States which are sane enough and 
strong enough for this, naturally come into agreeable rela- 
tions with other states of like character. Commonly that is 
enough. But there are men and nations who prefer to be 
outlaws ; and there are men and nations with no inclina- 
tions towards outlawry who have differences that cannot 
be settled by discussion and agreement. Moreover, men 
and women do not separate into nations upon moral lines. 
Without much reference to causes, some in all nations would 
have conflict for the mere sake of conflict, or for a mere 
show of strength and the power to bully ; some would avoid 
conflict at any cost; and some believe that force is never 
necessary to the maintenance of just principles. We have to 
deal with common opinion and with prevalent conditions. 
Differences between men will continue to arise, and they 
will be settled by conciliation, by arbitration, by judicial 
determination, or by force. The more serious differences 
between nations, as well as between men, will have to be 
settled in one of these ways. Many of the differences be- 
tween nations are settled by discussion, and we hear little 
of them. Some are settled by arbitration, to the avoidance 
of many wars. But international arbitration of aggravated 
disputes is not much to be relied upon except between the 
most enlightened nations having predominant moral sense. 
Settlement by law will be the surer, but it depends upon 



376 AMERICAN EDUCATION 

common sentiment, upon some kind of continuing agree- 
ment, upon principles being reduced to form, upon an 
established and satisfying tribunal, upon recognized prac- 
tice for joining issues and proceeding to determinations, 
and upon the extent of the understanding that the nations 
will submit to it themselves and support its judgments in 
all parts of the world. 

This is international constitutionalism. It is constitu- 
tionalism in its fullest flower. Arbitration may avoid war ; 
constitutionalism is a system reasonably certain to avoid 
war. Even more, it is forehanded, it is the object lesson, it 
is educative, it quickens initiative, and it opens opportunity 
to the best impulses of all people in all the nations. The 
schools, particularly the schools of the masses out of whose 
freedom constitutionalism has always sprung, can ill afford 
to have no part in helping it on. But it must be a part which 
is neither sporadic nor spasmodic, neither memorized nor 
mechanical. It must spring out of that impulse and grasp 
which provide the background of all substantial accom- 
plishment ; it must proceed from impulse to result with due 
regard to the basis upon which the schools rest and to all 
of the other interests which centre in them. And that must 
come through the thinking of the teachers rather than 
through the mechanism of the schools. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



A. B. DEGREE, shortening of course 
leading to, 166-167. 

Academic freedom, limits of, 236- 
255. 

Academies, early history of, 34, 150, 
152-154 ; differentiated from high 
schools, 153-154 ; not democratic 
institutions, 151. 

Accrediting high schools in the 
West, 196, 221. 

Agricultural college, 296-297. 

Agricultural industries, provision 
for, in school system, 291-306. 

Agriculture, department of, educa- 
tional activities, 110-111. 

Alaska schools, 110. 

American university, 187-199. 

Architecture, promotion and aid by 
state, 46. 

Athletics, 307-326. 

Attendance, compulsory, and illit- 
eracy, 61-73; proposition to re- 
duce age of attendance, 288. 

B. A. DEGREE, shortening of course 
leading to, 166-167. 

Boards of education, members not 
city officers but agents of the 
state, 53; advantages and dis- 
advantages of management by, 
125 ; powers and duties of, 23-27, 
83. 

Boston Latin School, 150. 

Church and schools, during colo- 
nial period, 149 ; relations of, 127, 
332; religious instruction in 
schools, 327-342. 

Cities, educational systems of, 22 ; 
high school teachers in, 162-163. 

Co-education, 256-271. 

Colleges, 185-271 ; shortening of 
course leading to A. B. degree, 
166-167; denominational, in 



western states, 218; first estab- 
lished, 35; outlook for, 197; phy- 
sical training and athletics, 312- 
326 ; relations to common schools, 
129; results of college training, 
97; state support, 132; limit of 
academic freedom of teachers in, 
236-255 ; preparation of teachers 
for secondary schools, 155, 178; 
need of college education for high 
school teachers, 156, 160; teach- 
ing in, statistics, 236; university 
competition, 167; give uplift to 
all schools, 203 ; use of title, 46. 

Colonial grammar school, 147. 

Commissioner of education in New 
York, powers and duties, 30. 

Common schools and universities, 
165-183. See also Schools. 

Compulsory attendance age, pro- 
position to reduce, 288. 

Compulsory attendance and illit- 
eracy, 61-73. 

Constitution, education not re- 
ferred to in, 4; court decisions 
construing Civil Rights Clause, 
51. 

Constitutional Convention, no dis- 
cussion of education in, 107. 

Constitutions, state, educational 
references, 5. 

Corporal punishment, right of 
school authorities to inflict, 57; 
of past generation, 142. 

County system of school adminis- 
tration, 21. 

Courts, determination of, fixing sta- 
tus of public schools, 50. 

Crucial test of the pubHc schools, 
74-86. 

Cuba, educational system. 111. 

Declaration of Independence, 
education not referred to in, 4. 



S80 



INDEX 



Defective children, school attend- 
ance of, 68. 

Degrees, conferment should be re- 
stricted, 46. 

Demands upon the schools, 119- 
136. 

Denominational colleges in western 
states, 218. 

Development of school system, 
17-38. 

Discipline, rights of school authori- 
ties, 57; of past generation, 142. 

District of Columbia, management 
of schools in, 109. 

District system, 18-19. 

Domestic science, instruction in, 
301-303. 

Donors, rights of, 253. 

Dutch, first to set up free elemen- 
tary school, 148. 

Education, American, trend in, 
200-215 ; not referred to in Con- 
stitution, 4; need of a federal 
plan, 107-116; first educational 
declaration in American law, 6; 
higher education included in 
nation's purpose, 9 ; nation's pur- 
pose, 3-16; private and proprie- 
tary institutions deserving of aid, 
10; private benefactions, 11 ; pur- 
pose of America distinguished 
from that of other lands, 13 ; rela- 
tion of democratic to educational 
advance, 149; slight references to 
in state constitutions, 4 ; no ten- 
dencies toward socialism, 7 ; sub- 
stantial uplift in system must 
come from above, 204; system 
growing in unity, 129; universal 
right of every individual, 8. See 
also Schools. 

Education, boards of. See Boards of 
education. 

Education for eflBciency, 275-290. 

Educational activities outside of the 
schools, 212. 

Elementary schools, 117-183; at- 
tendance in, 168; character de- 
termined by high schools, 42; 
proposed shortening of course, 



168, 288; proposed changes in 
seventh and eighth grades, 288- 
289; three classes of schools fol- 
lowing, 288; criticisms of, 100, 
278-284, 290; Dutch first to es- 
tablish, 148; industrial training 
in, 101, 278-290; science in, 137- 
146; physical training in, 310, 
324; work of, 129. 

England, educational purpose, 13. 

Examinations, statistics of results 
in cities and villages, 159-160. 

Faem and the school, 291-306. 
Federal plan, need of, 107-116. 
Football, criticisms, 316-323. 
France, educational purpose, 14. 
Free school, use of term, 148. 
Functions of the state, 39-48. 

Gekmant, educational purpose, 14. 

Gifts, donors' rights, 253; of the 
United States for school pur- 
poses, 32. See also Land grants. 

Grammar school, colonial, 147. 

High schools, differentiated from 
academies, 153-154; distinctly 
an American creation, 158; pro- 
posed extension of course, 167, 
169; first decisive manifestations, 
154; part of free school system, 
131; growth, 154; physical train- 
ing in, 311, 324; rise of, 147-156; 
teaching in, 157-164; dependent 
upon universities, 170; relations 
to state universities, 221; in vil- 
lages and cities compared, 158; 
teachers: 155, 157-164; clas- 
sified, 162; need of college educa- 
tion for, 156, 160; preparation of, 
155, 178; salaries, 162-163. 

Higher education, included in na- 
tion's purpose, 9. 

Illiteracy, and compulsory attend- 
ance, 61-73 ; effective attendance 
laws reduce, 66 ; among children 
decreasing, 68; proportion of 
illiterates decreasing, 67; in for- 
eign countries, 62, 66 ; proportion 



INDEX 



381 



of native and foreign born illit- 
erates, 65 ; percentage of illiterate 
voters in states having compul- 
sory attendance laws, 66; per- 
centage of illiterate voters in 
states without compulsory attend- 
ance laws, 67; percentage in 
cities and country compared, 68; 
prevention of, 70-72; in United 
States, 62; reasons for greater 
illiteracy in this country, 69; 
more among women than men, 
68. 

Indian schools, 110. 

Industrial pursuits, relation of uni- 
versities to, 177. 

Industrial training, need of, 275- 
290; in elementary schools, 101, 
211, 278-290; details of plan of, 
285-286; purpose of schools for, 
285; articulation of schools for, 
with public school system, 288. 

International peace, promotion by 
schools, 367-376. 

Land grants, 6, 32, 33, 191. 

Latin grammar school, 147. 

Legal basis of the schools, 49-60. 

Legislature, eligibility of school 
officers to membership, 53. 

Libraries, state aid and encourage- 
ment, 46, 212. 

Limits of academic freedom, 236- 
255. 

Manual training, not urged against 
intellectual labor, 277; differen- 
tiated from industrial training, 
285. 

Military academies, 110. 

Moral character, influence of 
schools in promoting, 58, 327- 
342; influence of other agencies 
than schools in determining, 103. 

Moral influence of universities upon 
educational system, 179-183. 

Museums, state aid and encourage- 
ment, 212. 

National Educational Association, 
on school administration, 25. 



Nation's purpose, 3-16. 

Nature study, 295-296. 

Naval academies. 110. 

Need of a federal plan, 107-116. 

New York, state supervision of 
schools, 29. 

Northwest Territory, educational 
declaration in ordinance organiz- 
ing, 6, 32. 

Parish schools, 334. 

Peace, international, promotion by 

schools. 367-376. 
Philippine Islands, educational 

matters. 111. 
Physical training and athletics, 

307-326. 
Political influence, immunity of 

school organization from, 37, 84; 

state universities free from, 222. 
Porto Rico, public instruction. 111. 
Presidents, university. 223-235. 
Private academies, 34. 
Private institutions, deserving of 

aid, 10, 128. 
Professional schools, alliance with 

universities, 210. 
Professions, preparation for, 194, 

209. 
Public morals and public schools, 

327-342. 
Public schools, use of term, 49. See 

also Schools. 

Religious instruction in schools, 

102, 327-342. 
Rise of high schools, 147-156. 
Rural school problem, 91, 293-294. 

School district, 18; size in farming 
regions, 92. 

School lands, 6, 32, 33, 191. 

Schools, one great aim of public 
school system, 86 ; American and 
foreign policy, 95; authority and 
responsibility of school system. 
55; independent autonomy de- 
manded from state, 43; central- 
ized administration, 18; tendency 
towards greater centralization, 
31; compulsory attendance, 61- 



382 



INDEX 



73 ; crucial test, 74-86 ; demands 
upon, 119-136; development of 
system, 17-38; discrimination in 
supporting new'propositions, 130 ; 
distribution of money to different 
grades, 89 ; governmental vs. sec- 
tarian control, 59; hygiene and 
sanitation. 139; legal basis, 49- 
60 ; local administration, 52 ; local 
and state control, 87; promotion 
of moral development, 58, 327- 
342; officers not local but state 
officers, 55; legal liability of offi- 
cers, 57 ; should have no connec- 
tion with pohtics, 37, 84; state 
institutions, 53 ; state supervision, 
28, 52 ; support, 88 ; system needs 
freedom, 133; unsettled ques- 
tions, 87-106. See also Boards of 

. education; Colleges; Education; 
Elementary schools ; Secondary 
schools; Teachers; Universities. 

Schools and international peace, 
367-376. 

Science in the elementary grades, 
137-146. 

Secondary schools, 117-183; at- 
tendance in, 168; proposed 
lengthening of course of ,167, 169 ; 
physical training in, 311, 324. 
See also Academies; High 
schools. 

Sectarian vs. governmental schools, 
59. 

Seminaries, 34. 

Special aspects and problems, 273- 
376. 

Spirit of the teacher, 343-354. 

State, functions of, 39-48; supervi- 
sion of schools, 28, 52. 

State universities, 216-222; rela- 
tions to high schools, 221. 

Superintendents, legal and authori- 
tative prerogatives, 25, 36, 84, 91 ; 
office an American creation, 90. 

Taxation, power vested in state 
government, 40. 

Teachers, colleges do not provide 
professional training for,155 ; how 
can teaching force be improved, 



89; questions concerning efficient 
teaching service, 94; number in 
the world, 372; professional su- 
pervision, 36, 80, 90; scientific 
training, 140 ; spirit of the teach- 
er, 343-354 ; the teacher and the 
position, 355-366; 

high school: 155, 157-164; 
classified, 162-163; need of col- 
lege education for, 156, 160; 
preparation of , 155,178; salaries 
of, 162-163. 

Teachers' agencies, 355-356, 365- 
366. 

Teaching, in advanced schools, 
freedom of, 236-255 ; in the high 
schools, 157-164. 

Territories, superintendents of pub- 
lic instruction, 109. 

Township system, 20. 

Trades schools. See Industrial 
training. 

Trend in American education, 
200-215. 

Truancy, illiteracy and compulsory 
attendance, 61-73. 

United States Bureau of Educa- 
tion, work of, 33; need of reor- 
ganization, 107-116. 

Universities, 185-271; American, 
187-199 ; contrast between Amer- 
ican and foreign, 195, 238-239; 
relations to common schools, 129, 
165-183; educational ideals of 
other countries not to be followed, 
192; placing graduates as teach- 
ers, 357-361 ; relation to indus- 
trial pursuits, 177; general influ- 
ences, 180; influence on lower 
schools, 204; moral influence 
upon educational system, 179; 
physical training and athletics, 
312-326; presidency, 223-235; 
attitude of president toward ath- 
letics, 321 ; alliance with profes- 
sional schools, 210 ; spiritual life, 
180; state, 216-222; state, rela- 
tions to high schools, 221; state 
support, 132; government of stu- 
dents, 181 ; use of title, 46 ; duties 



INDEX 



383 



of trustees and faculty, 223-226; 
in the West, 189, 205, 216-222; 
western, part of common school 
system, 207 ; work of, other than 
professional training, 210; 

teaching staff: 225-226, 228- 
229; limit of academic freedom, 
236-255 ; preparation of teachers 
for secondary schools, 178; sta- 
tistics, 236. 
Unsettled questions, 87-106. 



Villages, high school teachers in, 
162-163. 

Western universities, 189, 205, 
216-222; part of common school 
system, 207. 

W omen, education of, 256-271 ; in- 
struction in home economics, 
301-303; right of suffrage, 260- 
261. 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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